20:02
Family is more than just a biological relationship. We also build our own networks of family and friendship that are evident in many works of art. Today we'll look at a few objects from the Lucas Museum's collections, through the lens of some of the top searches on Google, to show the ways in which these questions show up in our everyday lives and have shaped the stories we've been telling for thousands of years.
[repeats query out loud] It's a subject explored in many artworks, including many in the Lucas Museum's collection. One of my personal favorite objects, an important historical document, this is the very first painting of dogs playing poker. This was produced as an advertisement for a whiskey brand in 1894 and became an icon of American visual culture. It's been satirized and copied infinite times. It's a great example of how advertising can introduce comedy and whimsy. By turning those figures into dogs, it creates a playful, imaginative version that clearly has stayed with us for many years.
N. C. Wyeth's "The Storybook" is an image we often use when we're talking about the museum, in part because it represents the act of creating a visual story in your head from the words on a page. You can see in the image, it's somewhat enigmatic, but whether or not the boy is reading the book and imagining what he's reading, or perhaps not paying attention to the words on the page and instead daydreaming about the worlds he's read in other books. We daydream about the things we wish we have, but sometimes our daydreams turn to something slightly darker.
"The Skeleton Dance" is a really important piece of animation. It's a series of dances with skeletons that rearrange their bones into various different shapes, and it's somewhat scary. It's part of a longer tradition dating to the Middle Ages of what is called the danse macabre. Early animation was often quite dark, in its kind of comedy. I think it allowed for people to laugh at death, even though it's something that can sometimes scare us.
We're now in a space where I spend a lot of my time. One of the two theaters at the museum, which we consider our film galleries. And what better place to talk about love than right here? Norman Rockwell is one of the most important chroniclers of 20th-century American culture. He depicts something that is kind of peculiarly American, the junior high and high school dance, the prom. Here you see the kind of awkwardness of these moments. Teenagers playing dress-up as adults. It's very sweet, it's very innocent in the colors that they wear, and also in contrast to the world around them.
This is a kind of grubby diner where you see cigarette butts on the floor, And so it's an interesting study in the way that early romance can feel really important and exciting but also a little bit awkward. We're now in the museum's beautiful park and gardens, which is part of the museum's 11-acre campus. This was designed as a space for community gathering to meet with friends and family. Family is more than just a biological relationship. We also build our own networks of family and friendship that are evident in many works of art.
The Winnie the Pooh stories are deeply embedded in family. A. A. Milne had a son named Christopher Robin that of course he wrote into the stories. E. H. Shepard famously based the bear on his own child's bear. Christopher Robin has deep bonds with his stuffed animals. They go on adventures, they build relationships, they struggle together and ultimately triumph. You'll notice a similar relationship coming through in this image of C-3PO and R2-D2.
Ralph McQuarrie created this image in 1975 to help pitch the image of "Star Wars" to the studios. They were the first two characters to appear in the films, and they're the only two that appeared in all nine of the Skywalker Saga. The relationship is one based on friendship, loyalty, and of course, as two robots, they don't have biological family, so they forge their own. We've just covered three themes that are in the Lucas Museum's collections and exhibitions. There are many more to discover.
Well, now I have to go. I only had five minutes, and so I've got to take off.
