B (1:55)

I think you're looking at.

A (1:56)

Who's that guy? Christian o'.

B (1:58)

Connell. That's radio DJ Christian o' Connell and noted historian Dan Jones.

A (2:03)

You've got a very weak chin in that tattoo. Anyway, tell us the story of why someone. And it's a male stomach.

B (2:11)

So far as I can tell, it's a male stomach. Someone just sent me this on Facebook. They said, I've. I've had your face tattooed on my stomach. Would you like to see? I don't know that I said yes, but I may have done.

A (2:24)

You can't not say yes enough.

B (2:25)

I don't think it's like, no, I'm fine. So the thing that. How do I say it politely? It's right in the splash zone. Do you know what I mean? Like, if the guy's having a good time, I'm having. Horrible phrase. A face full. Should we do the show?

A (2:45)

Let's move swiftly on and do the show. Good sleep is everything. That's why Ollie's science bag support is made with a blend of melatonin and L theanine for both kiddos and grownups. So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help your racing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Ollie Sleep solutions for the whole family@olli.com that's o l l y dot com.

B (3:18)

Hello, this is History's Greatest Fails with me, Dan Jones, historian and author.

A (3:23)

And I'm Elizabeth Day, fellow author and podcaster. And together, each week we explore some of history's greatest fails. What are we doing this week, Dan?

B (3:32)

Well, this week we are talking about artistic failures of all sorts. Hopefully not so great as the one we were Talk the start of the show. I want to talk about the ways in which people have failed in the world of arts. And that could be in a number of different ways. There's the classic. Yeah, classic. Failure to be recognized in your own lifetime.

A (3:55)

Stop looking at me so directly.

B (3:57)

Hold on. You might fit into the next category, which is to be, you know, forgotten quite soon after your career's over. I said might. I don't think you're timeless. And there are other forms of failures as well. Failure to be remembered for doing the right thing. And then there's another interesting category, which is the moral failure of the artist and how we think about art, essentially by bad people. Why are you looking at me like that now?

A (4:28)

I don't know. Maybe because of the opening anecdote about a tattoo in the splash zone.

B (4:32)

I didn't do the tattoo.

A (4:34)

We don't actually know whether that's your tattoo or not.

B (4:36)

One way to find out.

A (4:37)

I'm very excited to get into this rich and fertile topic, and we are going to be discussing three artists, two painters, and one writer. We're talking about Vincent van Gogh, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Georges Sans. Ooh, thank you.

B (4:55)

Ooh, that had a little je ne sais quoi.

A (4:57)

And just a heads up that we are going to be traversing some challenging emotional territory. We are going to be discussing rape and suicide, so please do take care when listening.

B (5:09)

Speaking of pronunciation, I hear you're going

A (5:12)

Gough, I'm going Goff. I know you've got a lot of American listeners, but I prefer the.

B (5:17)

Oh, so you're thinking I'm gonna go Van Gogh. Yes, but there's a middle ground, isn't there, where people go, van Gogh. We're not gonna do it. I think Van Gogh is fine.

A (5:28)

Okay, well, now we've established my failure to pronounce the name of an artistic failure.

B (5:33)

Did I say it was a failure?

A (5:34)

You implied it heavily. Let's kick off with Vincent Van Gogh. Yeah, he's arguably the most well known out of this trio. The most famous post impressionist painter, and yet someone who famously sold only one work during his lifetime, was beset by mental illness, disability, impoverishment, and a tricky friendship with his fellow artist Paul Gauguin. But it was a tempestuous friendship and an argument ultimately led to Van Gogh slicing off the lobe of one of his ears. And then he checked himself into this institution for the mentally ill. And it was in this institution that he produced some of his most extraordinary work. And I think part of what makes those paintings of that era so extraordinary is partly because he was seeing the world in such a different light, because he was going through this terrible experience of depression and confusion and alienation. And in a way, it might be quite difficult to divorce that from then his vision of Starry Night, where you get these scary kinetic stars in the night sky and this oversized cypress tree, or many of the other works that he produced during this period. What's your take generally on Van Gogh and failure in his lifetime?

B (7:09)

For a lot of artists, there's this feeling that struggle is an inherent part of the artistic process and that maybe not even just struggle, that suffering is necessary to art. And in some ways, Van Gogh feels like the poster boy for that. In that, I mean, this is a truly extraordinary and very short life in which he wasn't really painting at any serious level for most of it. I mean, there's drifts through school, doesn't really succeed as an arts dealer. Unlike, thankfully, his brother Theo did succeed and supported him for many years to begin with. I mean, self taught, so doesn't really succeed in art school. And then you have this flourishing for a very small number of years in which he produces like 900 paintings. And yet even at that time, the recognition isn't there. If we're measuring recognition in terms of sales. And of course, Van Gogh's life ended early by suicide when he shot himself in the chest. So I feel like when we think about Van Gogh, it's very hard to take him out of that place of the archetype that. It's like Balzac in his garret, kind of eating coffee grounds and kind of scribbling away that that somehow is what we think when we think about great artists.

A (8:24)

It's the La Boheme quandary. It's that idea of the tortured creative genius in a garret getting tuberculosis and having very cold hands. And I think you're so right to bring it up, because there has been this myth, and it's often a very gendered myth. It's often associated with male artists or writers who can just ponce around waiting for the muse to strike them, and so many women. And actually, we're gonna come on to George sand, and she's a great example of this. She was very prolific in her lifetime, and then afterwards, that was seen as somehow undermining the quality of her work. And that feeds into this idea that in order to be a quote, unquote, true artist, and I don't believe this, obviously, one can only produce a certain number of things of artistic merit because it is such a source of suffering, and that is the nobility of it. And you're right that it's difficult to extract Van Gogh from that history. I think what's also interesting about him, you know, he, as you say, had an incredibly short life, died before he turned 40. But he had people who had his back, and I think that was very important. So you mentioned his brother Theo there. Theo's wife. I think her name was Joanna. Then after Van Gogh died, sort of protected his legacy, took care of his paintings, made some very smart decisions. And actually, Van Gogh's subsequent extraordinary, stellar and global success is partly as a result of how carefully he was archived, categorized, sold after his death. And I think that's quite interesting to think of through the lens of failure, because sometimes it's a failure of the culture and a failure of the institutions that mean someone feels like an artistic failure in their own lifetime. And then you get to the question of when does an artist choose to quit and when do they stay true and strong to their vision, even if no one else gets it?

B (10:34)

Yes. Do you really believe that at some level you have to suffer to produce good art? Let's say you've written lots of brilliant books, so have you had that point when you've been writing where you've gone, this really fucking sucks and it hurts, but somehow I feel like I need to be in this. This place to do that?

A (10:56)

Yes and no. I find it really annoying when people talk about how hard it is to write and how much it costs them because I think, well, you're so privileged to be getting to do that rather than working at the coal face, like, you know, literally. But there is a sense in which when I write, and I don't know if you feel this, Dan, I am working stuff out. So some of my writing comes with a sense of catharsis because I'm able to work through some knotty experiences I've either had in my life or some ideas I want to understand. But I would never say that it's caused me suffering and nor would I say that I need to suffer in order to write and to connect.

B (11:46)

No one looks at Jack Vetriano, for example, the famous sort of modern Scottish painter who paints incredibly twee scenes. I believe Vetriano's self taught, right from the same way as Van Gogh from, you know, how to paint, how to draw books where you just copy by grid. And Vetriano sells an unbelievable amount of work and is kind of sort of sneered at by the entire art community. Is that. Or maybe not the entire art community, but he's a sort of. I mean, I'm using him now as the classic example of someone who's very commercially successful, but we sort of don't feel is necessarily A, suffering, B, struggling, having this kind of glamorous failure to be recognized in his own lifetime. I mean, so. But there he is. I mean, like millions of people across the world are getting joy from looking at Jack Vetriano's art.

A (12:38)

And I think that's such a profound point and it does get to the root of art and commerce.

B (12:44)

It's good to have praise from you

A (12:48)

and where the two intersect and whether one undermines the other. And ultimately, I'm sad to say, we can't solve that. We can't solve that today. And nor can we solve it for any individual. Because ultimately, for me anyway, art and the success, quote, unquote, of art depends on the art being able to forge meaningful connection with whoever it encounters. And that's so individual. And so for me, the metric of success of my books is if I've connected with one person, if I've moved one person, if I've made them feel seen on the page. And I see it very much as sort of ongoing dialogue and conversation.

B (13:31)

I don't think I've ever said this to you before, but you sound a bit like Rick Rubin today.

A (13:35)

Well, the second compliment of the episode, thank you.

B (13:39)

My absolute pleasure. But no, Rick Rubin Talks brilliantly about this in the field of music production, which is that when you're in that sort of creative, artistic space, you have to make it not even for one other person, for yourself. And you make the thing that you. And you don't overthink what the reception of it is gonna be like, what the commercial value of the product is, that you have to be in this space of pure creation. And so, in thinking about Van Gogh and you mentioned this scene and captured, I thought, very well, that's half a compliment. He's in. I think he had two rooms in the asylum where he was looked after, One in which he slept and one in which he painted. And the idea that he's sort of looking out of this window, painting the famous starry night, probably not thinking, am I gonna make any dough out of this? Just reacting to the purity of the cosmos through this window of a room in which at times, he was forcibly kept. And I think that. I'm sure, I read recently, that either astrophysicists or. I'm going to bracket them, catch all time, clever scientists have looked at the shape of the stars that he's painted and he's noticed the physics of what's happening with the light and with the movement of matter. So if in some sense, art is, you know, the pursuit of great art is the ability to see clearly.

A (15:15)

That was beautifully expressed. There you go, another compliment.

B (15:20)

I was just doing it myself, really, like Rick Rubin would have said.

A (15:23)

And he's not only clearly seeing the cosmos and what it represents, but he's also expressing his internal atmosphere through it, which I think is what gives it its resonance for so many generations. And I think another mark of the success of art is whether it inspires other art. And obviously you have the very famous song, the Don McLean song, starry starry Night, of course. Used to love that song. We need to move on.

B (15:55)

Let's move on to the category of artists who have been incredibly famous in their lifetime but are soon forgotten. No one's saying that's you.

A (16:06)

I know. I didn't even think.

B (16:07)

But you were nodding and looking at me like you still think.

A (16:10)

I think that I'm encouraging you. You're doing very well, Dan.

B (16:13)

Carry on. Well,

C (16:17)

when you consider medieval history like I do, you realise that a great deal of change hinges on leaps of faith, something England's King Henry VI largely did not do. Now, he might have been better suited to selling stained glass windows. And he would have been unstoppable if Shopify was around in his day. It's a commerce platform that helps you make that leap to get your business into the world. Henry would have loved Shopify's inbuilt design studio, where he could have sampled hundreds of ready to use templates to build a beautiful online store. Plus, this shy King would have had plenty of AI tools at his disposal, helping him elevate his product descriptions, page headlines and product photography. So make that leap. Turn what if into with Shopify today. Sign up for your £1 per month trial today at shopify.co.uk dynasty. Go to shopify.co.uk dynasty. That's shopify.co.uk dynasty.

B (17:17)

You know what?

C (17:18)

You gotta feel sorry for King Henry vi because he wouldn't be anybody's personality hire and he was just as bad at HR as at Kingship. He's the guy who forced all his warring nobles to hold hands in the Love Day Parade. If only Plantagenet England had indeed sponsored jobs. With indeed, you can spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all the right boxes. Less stress, less time, more results when you need the right person to cut through the chaos. This is a job for Indeed sponsored Jobs and listeners of my show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com thisishistory just go to Indeed.com thisishistory right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.comthisishistory Terms and conditions apply.

B (18:12)

Need a hiring hero?

C (18:13)

This is a job for indeed sponsored Jobs.

B (18:20)

Do you want to talk about George Sand?

A (18:21)

Yes, I do.

B (18:23)

Georges Sand, George sand and Vincent Van Gogh. Okay, fine, yes.

A (18:28)

So Georges sand was one of the most famous writers in 19th century Europe, and she wrote prolifically across novels, plays, journalism, political commentary, and she sold an enormous amount in her lifetime. Now, the dates we're talking about, she was born in 1804, died 1874. Over 70 books of hers were published. She's a fascinating character because of how she refused to subscribe to conventional norms of the time she got divorced. She famously cross dressed, although apparently that was quite common in the Paris of the era. You had to apply for, and this was, their words, a transvestite pass in order to do it. But you could actually do it. So she would walk around the streets of Paris dressed as a man because you got much more access to the public sphere dressed as a man. She smoked in public, which also was sort of mildly scandalous. The interest she had an affair with Chopin, multiple affairs, but the interesting thing about this was that during her lifetime, it did not affect her popularity, it affected her popularity. If someone found her novels scandalous, and often they were, then they would find her scandalous. But if they admired her novels, which many people did, including, like, Victor Hugo and luminaries of her time, then they didn't find her behaviour scandalous and they were, you know, they were completely able to separate the personal heresy. But what's fascinating about her, for the purposes of our discussion, is that when she died, there was in later years a reassessment of her work, largely due, I guess, to the kind of Victorian moralizing which then decided, actually, she did behave rather badly and she was so overly prolific that none of her books can have any merit. And so she was forgotten about for many, many years.

B (20:17)

Hmm. I mean, there's an overlap with this category of what do we think about her behavior? You know, as pieties change and moral standards change, how do we judge the work? And then there's this sense that if you produce a lot, you must be over. It's like when you go into. If I go into a restaurant and there's 40 items on the menu, this is a bad restaurant. This is clearly not a.

A (20:39)

Unless it's the Cheesecake Factory, which I honestly think every single item is a knockout.

B (20:46)

Yeah.

A (20:46)

Anyway. Yes.

B (20:47)

Or a cheap date. I think this is. This is a great category, which is in some ways kind of hard to define because the people were forgotten. We've forgotten. But this is surely the lot of almost all artists to be forgotten. Right. Even if we think about the stage, I mean, who today goes, oh, God, you know, I wish I could look up one of Sarah Bernhardt's, you know, late career forays into silent movies, or even thinks about Sarah Bernhardt, you know, nobody. But this was the greatest actor of her day. Or Dussel or any of these people, and many more. Felicia Hemans, the Boy Stood on the Burning Deck. Everyone knows that line. But how much of the. The rest of her sort of patriotic, lyrical poetry does anyone know? Or Edward Bulwell Litton, who wrote dozens of novels, kind of invented sci fi and came up with the phrases, it was a dark and stormy night, the pen is mightier than the sword. The great unwashed, you know, when we think of Shakespeare's kind of phrase making, or Chaucer's phrase making, sort of great people.

A (21:49)

And can I add in an entry here as well, because.

B (21:51)

No, no, I can't. Yeah, go on.

A (21:53)

Because my great friend runs a publishing imprint set up by her mother. Called Persephone Books, and it is devoted to resurrecting the reputation of forgotten predominantly female writers of the interwar period. And I recently read the Crooked Cross, which became Persephone's first bestseller, which was published in the early 1930s and by a woman called Sally Carson, who was British and went on a holiday to Germany and wrote this novel predicting the rise of fascism and what would happen happen to German Jews. It's an astonishing read and in its day it was a huge bestseller. It was adapted into a play and I think a movie. She wrote two more installments and then she vanished and she died early of breast cancer. She got married, she had kids and she vanished twice. Once because she got married and got swallowed into the domestic sphere, and then once because history forgot her, because it was easy to forget women who died young.

B (22:58)

Wow.

A (22:58)

It's an existential question really, for all of us. Would we rather be recognized in our lifetimes, have success in our lifetimes, or would we rather have a lasting legacy for future generations? Which would you rather, Dan, don't say both. You can't.

B (23:16)

No, no, you can't say both. I mean, it's so difficult, isn't it? I guess I'm going to be cheap and low and go for success in one's lifetime because who can predict what the filter will filter, if you see what I mean.

A (23:33)

Yes.

B (23:33)

And who can predict, for example, if in a hundred years time people will still be going to the Van Gogh sunflowers or if some smart ass will have written the sunflowers are a load of crap. And this whole area of art was totally sort of Debra and denuded and forget all that. So. No, so I would go with take it while it's there. What about you?

A (23:56)

The same.

B (23:57)

I mean, obviously I love that you want to be. You want to be known forever.

A (24:00)

I do want to be known forever, of course, but. Well, also this is going to make you feel bad. That has a particular pertinence for me because I've been unable to have children. And so actually the idea of having a lasting legacy is really important for me to create in other ways.

B (24:16)

Okay, yeah.

A (24:17)

But if I'm forced with a choice, then in your lifetime, because then you can make the most of it. There's no guarantee that you'll be floating gentle as a cloud, no overlooking everything.

B (24:28)

And just one last on. I mean, you walked into the British Library many times, I assume not the London Library. I know too much of a pleb to go there. But you walk into British Library or the Cambridge University Library or, you know, the Bodleian or whatever. And you see just a tiny fraction of the millions upon millions upon millions upon millions of books that have been published and continue to be published and are probably brought in trucks there every day because they're copyright libraries and have to have one of everything. And you go, wow. I mean, to have had one moment in time where more than sort of three people read and appreciated. I'll take that disso jam today, not jam tomorrow.

A (25:11)

Yes, Artemisia. Sure.

B (25:12)

Artemisia Gentileschi.

A (25:15)

She is the earliest of our figures. So she was born in 1593 and born in Rome, I think.

B (25:22)

Or was that George Sandal born in Rome?

A (25:25)

Yeah, yeah, there we go. Okay. And she, like George sand, was incredibly successful in her lifetime and an extraordinary person.

B (25:35)

Yes.

A (25:35)

Her father was an artist, so she was trained in how to paint. Age 17, she produced one of her most famous works, Susannah and the Elders. And if you look at it now, you will see that even age 17, in the 16th century, she had what I would think of as a sort of feminist take on that biblical allegory where Susannah is the heroine of the piece. And not only that, she's painted so clearly from life the way that her breast folds into her stomach. It's just a staggeringly beautiful work. And to have that sense of self and context and awareness at the age of 17, I mean, an astonishing talent. And then something awful happened to her, and she was raped by her art tutor. And this is the mark of the woman that she was, that even at that young age, she took that tutor to court and it went on trial, and she had to give testimony whilst her thumbs were in screws, because they had this belief at the time that if you caused pain to the person testifying, they would only be able to give you the truth. And she went through all of that. And I think you can see the long trail of that trauma in the rest of her body of work, in the way that she interprets classical Judith Cutting the head off. Holofernes, for instance, is another one that she revisited time and time again. And she was successful in her lifetime. But then after she died, again, her reputation was somewhat overlooked and a lot of her work was attributed to her father.

B (27:15)

Yes. Who was himself a noted painter. I mean, she's interesting because, you know, you have, on the one hand, I mean, if you were to strip gender out of it, which I don't propose to do for any more than this thought experiment, you would say, oh, here's the kid of some very, very famous Artist Napo Baby. She's had an interesting afterlife because she's often held up when one wants to look back at the history of art and ask the question, as many often do, why are there so few great female artists? She's often the one that's held up as a sort of test case. It was an interesting essay. I suppose this kicked. I will mansplain some feminism to you. The essay why have there been no Female artists? Back in 1971 was sort of quite critical of taking Artemisia as your first example, because Linda Notchlin, who wrote the article, said that the feminist's first reaction is to swallow the bait of the question, why have there been no great females, hook, line and sinker, and to attempt to answer the question, as put I. E. To dig up examples of worthy or insufficiently appreciated women artists throughout history. So in a sense, she can represent this tendency. Tendency to go, no, no, there were, you know, there were all these great women. We've just sort of forgotten them. And this is something we were talking about in the previous episode. Whereas, as Nottran would frame the case, you're actually taking on board this idea that great art is expressed in this gendered way, that what we perceive as great art is effectively male art.

A (28:57)

Yes.

B (28:58)

And that actually there needs to be a much bigger sort of reorientation of how one understands art that doesn't just say, ah, well, look at Artemisia Gentileschi. She sort of mixed it with all the guys of her day.

A (29:12)

Yes, that makes sense. It's about removing someone from the male gaze. That built the system, in a way. But. But you also have to take into account those female artists who did do astonishing work within those strictures. It's part of the reason I love Elena Ferranti, who is this extraordinary novelist. It's a pen name. We don't know who she is, if she is even a woman. Although I would say, having read her books, she seems very female to me. And she wrote some of my favorite books, which collectively are known as the Neapolitan Quartet and part of what Elena Ferranti has written about in terms of why she chose as her subject female friendship, which she examines during the course of those four books over 50 years in Naples and Beyond. It's this friendship between Lina and Lilla, and it's a friendship examined in infinite nuance and complexity. The wild platonic love, but also the jealousy. It sees this woman go through divorce and ambition and alienation and then reconnection. And she said for Auntie that she wanted to take the architecture of the great classic novel, which was primarily written by dead white men, about stuff that interests it, who weren't dead when they were writing it, that primarily interested. Like white men. Like them. In the same way as the top of the UK podcast charts are so often dominated by white men talking to each other, about each other and about systems that they've created. And Ferranti, her radicalism comes in taking that form and using it for this topic. So in a way, I would say that Gentileschi uses that form and radicalizes it by using it for the feminist awakening that I would argue she was experiencing. So when you see something like Judith slaying Holofernes, it is very much seen from the female perspective.

B (31:29)

Yes.

A (31:30)

So I think she's sort of doing what she can, but I think the tragedy of her story is that so much of it was overshadowed by this horrible act of violence, her 1611 rape. And I think to draw this episode to a close that so often the failure that we're talking about is a failure of context to see the artist as they deserve to be seen in their time.

B (32:00)

Beautifully put.

A (32:01)

Do you think?

B (32:01)

I think I'm not gonna top it. So we should just close the show off there.

A (32:05)

I've loved this conversation.

B (32:07)

Well, I always love having a conversation with you, but this one, I think, has been really good.

A (32:10)

Yes.

B (32:11)

Nice to discuss a lot.

A (32:12)

And it included three compliments from you to me, so that's a record.

B (32:16)

Watch out for next episode because you've used two episodes worth worth of compliment quota. Wanna talk about what next episode's gonna be about?

A (32:24)

Let's do it.

B (32:25)

Next week we're gonna be talking about war and memorialization and how the ultimate failure of society, that is the breakdown into military conflict, can create some moments where humanity brings itself back together.

A (32:39)

And I'll get the chance to geek out about my favourite war memorials.

B (32:42)

You are such a nerd.

A (32:46)

Honourably so. But in the meantime, if you want more historical failures, do listen back to our past episodes where Dan and I have discussed the legacy of Richard iii, why formidable women like Egypt's Farah Hatshepsut got left out of the history books and more.

B (33:00)

And if you want more of Elizabeth, do watch and listen to her podcast, how to Fail, which is all about.

A (33:07)

It's all about failure, really, darling. What we learn from it and how we survive it. I asked my guests about three times they failed in life and what they learned along the way.

B (33:15)

Fabulous. And if you're one of my royal favourites, you can grab this week's bonus episode where producer Al and I are discussing the failures my favourites can't ignore. Catch us on patreon.com thisishistory and finally,

A (33:28)

if you've got a question about anything we've discussed on history's greatest fails so far, Dan's Royal favourites can DM him on Patreon or email us on thisishistoryonymusic.com that's all.

B (33:40)

Let's fail again. Well, will there be a next time? Will there be a next time?

A (33:44)

Will we fail to have a next time?

B (33:46)

That's the question. See ya. Would you buy a Caravaggio? Limitless funds. No. Because he's a merger or. Cause it just wouldn't go in.

A (33:57)

It's not my vibe. It's not really. I don't really like his.

B (34:01)

Right.

A (34:03)

Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho. Look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you. And hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Spring's calling, Ross. Work your magic.