var article_index = {"love":[{"id":140,"category_id":3,"name":"I rarely place an arm around my spouse","description":"The warmth and quietness of their love for one another, even though neither is especially attractive or particularly accomplished by the standards of the world, is shocking, as well as deeply moving. Outstanding though this is, it is a picture that is geared to produce an ambivalent reaction. We delight in it, yet \u2013 at the same time \u2013 feel regret. We don\u2019t live up to the beauty of the picture. We have too often been mean, angry, curt with the person we love; or we catch our breath with a sigh because so little of this loyal, tender devotion has come our way. Rembrandt illuminates, with painful accuracy, our lack: we don\u2019t have nearly enough genuine love in our lives and in our world.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nA lover\u2019s gaze is more accurate than public opinion. The world does not easily recognize the reason why we deserve to be loved; we may be modest, only very average to look at, not especially distinguished; and yet the need to be \u2013 in the eyes of someone \u2013 an object of beauty and tenderness cannot \u2013 must not \u2013 be denied.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn","painting_name":"Isaac and Rebecca, Known as \u2018The Jewish Bride\u2019, 1669","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953195fig.-7---SK-C-216-00.jpg","stub":"i-rarely-place-an-arm-around-my-spouse","order":7,"category_name":"Love","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953195fig.-7---SK-C-216-00.jpg"},{"id":175,"category_id":3,"name":"I\u2019ve fallen out of love","description":"In theory, we already think that strawberries are nice. But Coorte has made a monument to them. He wants to resensitize us to their extraordinary beauty. He\u2019s reminding us that we love an aspect of the world more than we thought, and that there are things we took for granted. He\u2019s looking at strawberries like an appreciative extraterrestrial would, rediscovering a sense of wonder and encouraging us to do the same.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe artist knows something about us: how familiarity dulls our appreciation of what is on offer. By inviting us to concentrate just for a minute or two, he can refresh our curiosity about, and engagement with, life. We need to do with many other things what Adrian Coorte did with a bowl of alpine strawberries. Starting with, at the very least, our partners.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Adriaen Coorte, 1696","painting_name":"A Bowl of Strawberries on a Stone Plinth","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954727fig.-30---SK-C-1687-00.jpg","stub":"ive-fallen-out-of-love","order":42,"category_name":"Love","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954727fig.-30---SK-C-1687-00.jpg"},{"id":176,"category_id":3,"name":"Sex and decency don\u2019t mix","description":"We\u2019re used to the idea that erotic images lack dignity and kindness. They tend to create a separate realm for sex, cut off from all the other things we normally care about. So it\u2019s surprising to come across a frankly erotic image that is also really interested in other aspects of human nature, that appreciates thoughtfulness and tenderness and that is interested in people\u2019s minds.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nShe hasn\u2019t surrendered her identity as an upright citizen just because she\u2019s taking off her stockings and is quietly letting us catch a glimpse of her upper thighs. She\u2019s still the same person who earlier that day made a perceptive comment to the Stadtholder at a reception and later went carefully through the domestic accounts. She knows how to pull off that difficult feat: being respectable and sexual at the same time.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe painting opens up the possibility that we can be both sexual and good. The picture, surprisingly perhaps, is rather like the portrait of a saint: it shows us someone we should seek to imitate.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Jan Havicksz Steen","painting_name":"Woman at her Toilet, 1655-1660","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954770fig.-31---SK-A-4052-06.jpg","stub":"sex-and-decency-dont-mix","order":43,"category_name":"Love","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954770fig.-31---SK-A-4052-06.jpg"},{"id":179,"category_id":3,"name":"No one is paying me enough attention","description":"Think of how invisible, tiny, poor and unrecognized you must feel to be drawn to buying a tea service like this.","artist_name":"Meissen Porcelain Factory","painting_name":"Tea service, 1732 ","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954952fig.-34---BK-17420.jpg","stub":"no-one-is-paying-me-enough-attention","order":46,"category_name":"Love","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954952fig.-34---BK-17420.jpg"},{"id":182,"category_id":3,"name":"Sex is natural","description":"He is still a youth, she is a professional. We like to think of sex as the natural expression of desire and so not as something you might have to learn how to do, or which requires professional coaching (although we readily accept these ideas when it comes to golf or maths). Instead, the print suggests that expert help is needed. The courtesan is not the last resort of the person who is too incompetent, selfish or lazy to find a lover; rather, she is an important professional, guiding us in an important area of experience. The print opens up what sounds like an unusual idea: we might need to learn how to have sex.","artist_name":"Kitagawa Utamaro","painting_name":"Young Man Smoking with a Courtesan, 1799","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395955072fig.-37---RP-P-2006-268.jpg","stub":"sex-is-natural","order":49,"category_name":"Love","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395955072fig.-37---RP-P-2006-268.jpg"},{"id":184,"category_id":3,"name":"It\u2019s only sex","description":"The woman has received bad news. Her lover will not be returning; he is quietly letting her down. It is the one who is not in love who often makes the more tender speeches. She gave herself fully to him sexually; now, slowly, she will have to learn to forget him. There is no such thing as \u2018casual sex\u2019, it is always a relatively serious matter in at least one party\u2019s eyes. We\u2019re reminded of the connection between sex and emotional vulnerability. It wasn\u2019t just Christianity that invented the idea that sex should accompany love. It\u2019s a deep seated longing in the human heart \u2013 because it hurts much more to be turned away by someone with whom one has also spent the night.","artist_name":"Suzuki Harunobu","painting_name":"Young Man Reading over a Young Woman\u2019s Shoulder, 1765-1770","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395955274RP-P-1956-627.jpg","stub":"its-only-sex","order":51,"category_name":"Love","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395955274RP-P-1956-627.jpg"},{"id":196,"category_id":3,"name":"People aren\u2019t loyal","description":"She thinks of him every day still and when the man arrived in town with his special photographing machine and charged her a price that she could hardly afford, she knew immediately that she wanted an image of her own. She remembers how annoyed he had been when he had had to pose (it had taken so long and he had had to borrow money from his friend), and yet how pleased she was to have had the portrait of him when he went to the army. Now it matters so much to her. It is the object she cherishes above all others, the one she\u2019d rescue from a burning house first. It\u2019s natural, therefore, if she ask to sit with the portrait \u2013 and chooses to hold it over her heart.","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Portrait of a Young Woman with a Daguerreotype, 1860","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1396259044RP-F-F14363-A.jpg","stub":"people-arent-loyal","order":63,"category_name":"Love","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1396259044RP-F-F14363-A.jpg"},{"id":212,"category_id":3,"name":"I\u2019ve got time","description":"We know that people long ago had hair, that they combed it, paid special attention to how it looked at formal receptions (or in a high wind), touched it at nervous moments in the drawing room and stroked each other\u2019s strands during the more intimate moments of courtship. Yet it is still surprising, moving, and most of all frightening, to find Jacoba\u2019s hair here in front of us \u2013 largely because the rest of Jacoba isn\u2019t here to go with it. The personality, daydreams, ambitions, sense of regret and kindness of heart that used to be tied to this hair have all gone, they are dust and ashes, at the very moment when Jacoba, through her eternal and rather youthful looking hair, seems newly and strikingly present.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe thought of death, abstract and therefore not too scary until now, starts to grip us more tightly. We are all headed Jacoba\u2019s way. Only bits of us, and not the most important parts, will endure, perhaps to be stared at by strangers in cabinets many centuries from now. This shouldn\u2019t be grounds for panic; the hair is just an ever-important reminder that the sand is running mercilessly fast through all of our hourglasses.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Lock of hair from Jacoba of Bavaria, 1436","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395956669fig.-62---NG-NM-654.jpg","stub":"ive-got-time","order":79,"category_name":"Love","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395956669fig.-62---NG-NM-654.jpg"},{"id":213,"category_id":3,"name":"I feel excluded","description":"So often we are on the wrong side of the door. We reckon that interesting things are going on somewhere else, but we are not privy to them. This model is generous towards this longing. It says: I know you want to see what is going on inside and in minute detail, and I\u2019ll help you. The model takes us into the tarry dank of the orlop deck (where the cables are stowed below the waterline), and along the noisy gun deck, reeking of gunpowder and cabbage soup, and up high in the salty wind of the main topmast staysail.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nArtworks have the power to take us into places we can\u2019t easily go: from the president\u2019s conscience to the lover\u2019s diary, from the pirate\u2019s headquarters to the middle of a boardroom dispute \u2013 thereby extending the range of experience that we can understand and use. They humanize the world.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Model of the 84-gun ship of the line Neptunus, 1837-1842","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395956771fig.-64a---NG-MC-508-12.jpg","stub":"i-feel-excluded","order":80,"category_name":"Love","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395956771fig.-64a---NG-MC-508-12.jpg"},{"id":223,"category_id":3,"name":"Only idiots like pretty, sweet things","description":"This is an unashamedly pretty picture, and educated people today quite often feel a bit queasy at the idea that art can be sweet and lovely. Isn\u2019t this a denial of all that is wrong with the world? Shouldn\u2019t art be about more weighty and worthy matters?<br \/>\n<br \/>\nVan Looy knew a lot about human suffering \u2013 not least his own (he lost both parents when he was five). Once life has shown us its darker sides, we start to take this sort of pretty scene more seriously. Beautiful flowers aren\u2019t a way of avoiding the tougher facts; they are a consolation now that we know what things are really like. We need beauty around us to keep up our spirits and to refresh our appetite for life. Cheerfulness \u2013 the mood that beauty naturally encourages \u2013 is a good state of mind to be able to access, given the number of practical problems we have to face. A taste for pretty art isn\u2019t a denial of the troubles of the world; it shows a wise awareness of the extent of suffering and a concern for bolstering oneselfagainst despair.","artist_name":"Jacobus van Looy","painting_name":"Summer Luxuriance","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1400672041SK-C-1645.jpg","stub":"only-idiots-like-pretty-sweet-things","order":88,"category_name":"Love","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1400672041SK-C-1645.jpg"}],"work":[{"id":136,"category_id":1,"name":"Ordinary work is merely a drudge","description":"It can be hard to see beauty and interest in the things we have to do every day and in the environments in which we live. We have jobs to go to, bills to pay, homes to clean and keep running, and we deeply resent the demands they make on us. They seem to be pulling us away from our real ambitions, getting in the way of a better life. Art and art galleries feel far away from all this: they are for a day off, for the holidays. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe linen cupboard itself could easily have been resented. It is an embodiment of what could, in unfavourable circumstances, be seen as boring, banal, repetitive \u2013 even unsexy. But the picture moves us because we recognize the truth of its message. If only we, like De Hooch, knew how to recognize the value of ordinary routine, many of our burdens would be lifted. It gives voice to the right attitude: the big themes of life \u2013 the search for prosperity, happiness, good relationships \u2013 are always grounded in the way we approach the little things. The statue above the door is a clue. It represents money, love, status, vitality, adventure. Taking care of the linen (and all that this stands for) is not incompatible with these grander hopes. It is, rather, the way to them. We can learn to see the allure of those who look after the little things, ourselves included. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nIt\u2019s a hard message to hold on to because we are constantly being told something different. This painting is small in a big and noisy world \u2013 but the fact that so many people revere it is hopeful; it signals that we know, deep down, that De Hooch is onto something important. <br \/>\n","artist_name":"Pieter de Hooch","painting_name":"Interior with Women beside a Linen Cupboard, 1663","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953066fig.-3---SK-C-1191-00.jpg","stub":"ordinary-work-is-merely-a-drudge","order":3,"category_name":"Work","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953066fig.-3---SK-C-1191-00.jpg"},{"id":137,"category_id":1,"name":"My life revolves around business","description":"The architects of the building depicted here, and the artist himself, were convinced about a challenging idea: if you want to get close to the important things, you will need a lot of calm, of whiteness, of emptiness, of peace. Serenity, concentration and order aren\u2019t luxuries, they aren\u2019t a superficial concern for a particular style of interior decoration; they are preconditions for a thoughtful, balanced life. The picture sends a slightly stern, but welcome message: you have to fight off distraction, it can ruin your life; you have to prioritize ruthlessly; entertainment is the enemy; simplify, get rid of what you don\u2019t really need; don\u2019t check your email all the time; focus is an achievement. Saenredam didn\u2019t just paint a church, he painted an attitude to life.","artist_name":"Pieter Jansz Saenredam","painting_name":"Interior of the Sint-Odulphuskerk in Assendelft, 1649","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953091fig.-4---SK-C-217-00.jpg","stub":"my-life-revolves-around-business","order":4,"category_name":"Work","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953091fig.-4---SK-C-217-00.jpg"},{"id":143,"category_id":1,"name":"Order is for accountants and boring people","description":"Stop and think how weird \u2013 and rather wonderful \u2013 it is that there\u2019s a linen cupboard in the middle of the nation\u2019s pre-eminent treasure house. We expect paintings to be here, but not bits of domestic furniture. Linen cupboards don\u2019t usually hold a place close to the centre of a society\u2019s self-image, although they should, and here they do.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nIn the seventeenth century, a family might have spent as much on this cupboard as we would on a car; they might have saved for years to buy it and considered its allocation in a will with great care. Perhaps their priorities have something to teach us. Everyday things should be beautiful and dignified. We need tools of order because we quite easily fall apart and go off the rails. A lot of art starts with a will to create order and bring calm. People from the past are strange in so many ways, but here they\u2019re just like us. The details of housekeeping have changed, but the need for order goes on.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nA well-organized cupboard doesn\u2019t just reflect an ordered mind; it reflects a passion for a life of reason. It tells you, rightly, to sort yourself out. Perhaps you have too many things. Could all you really need be kept in one fine container? Should you clean the cupboards when you get home?<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Cupboard, 1607","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953301fig.-10---BK-16071.jpg","stub":"order-is-for-accountants-and-boring-people","order":10,"category_name":"Work","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953301fig.-10---BK-16071.jpg"},{"id":144,"category_id":1,"name":"You have to be very tough to survive","description":"Since the school playground, we\u2019ve known that we must not show our fragility. We\u2019ve learnt to have \u2018defences.\u2019 So there is always a fragile bit of us, but we keep it very hidden. But this rock crystal doesn\u2019t apologise for being weak. It admits it\u2019s delicate; it is confident enough to demand careful treatment; it makes the world understand it could easily be damaged. And with good reason. It\u2019s not fragile because of a deficiency, or by mistake. It\u2019s not as if its maker was trying to make it tough and hardy and then \u2013 stupidly \u2013 ended up with something a child could snap, or that would be shattered by clumsy mishandling. It is fragile and easily harmed as the consequence of its search for transparency and refinement, its desire to welcome sunlight and candlelight into its depths. Crystal can achieve wonderful effects but the necessary price is fragility. Some good things have to be delicate \u2013 the dish says: \u2018I am delightful, but if you knock me about, I\u2019ll break, and that\u2019s not my fault\u2019.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nIt is the duty of civilization to allow the more delicate forms of human activity to thrive, to create environments where it is OK to be fragile. And we know, really, that it is not crystal that needs this care most, it is ourselves and \u2013 more awkwardly \u2013 the people who share our lives.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Lidded Dish, Breisgau, c 1600 ","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953320fig.-11-M-BK-17198-00.jpg","stub":"you-have-to-be-very-tough-to-survive","order":11,"category_name":"Work","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953320fig.-11-M-BK-17198-00.jpg"},{"id":164,"category_id":1,"name":"Never trust people in power","description":"Power corrupts, but not always. The picture is showing us an unfamiliar scene: men in power who \u2013 surprisingly \u2013 seem genuinely to have the best interests of the public at heart, who take their responsibility seriously and discharge their duties in a sober and thoughtful way.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWe\u2019re worried about this. Is it just flattery? Is it naive or submissive to take the image at face value? We should ask of power that it meets the challenge set by the picture \u2013 and to do that, we have to believe that power could be good. A belief in the inherent corruptness of power is, paradoxically, not a good starting-point for getting the kind of governance we need and deserve.","artist_name":"Karel Dujardin","painting_name":"Werkhuis, Amsterdam, 1669","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954458fig.-24---SK-C-4-00.jpg","stub":"never-trust-people-in-power","order":31,"category_name":"Work","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954458fig.-24---SK-C-4-00.jpg"},{"id":192,"category_id":1,"name":"My job should be more creative","description":"Imagine you could make decent money in return for being creative. That\u2019s what he did \u2013 and the idea has spread across the whole of society now. We all want to be \u2018creative\u2019. But there aren\u2019t too many opportunities to do this in the world as it is. A handful of notable artists (along with fashion models and rock stars) have glamorized a particular kind of career path in which one is paid well for essentially being oneself. This is an extremely appealing vision, yet few people can in fact access it for themselves. The painting should come with a warning sign: \u2018Most likely, you won\u2019t ever be like me\u2019.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWe owe ourselves a certain amount of sympathy for being caught up in a professional dilemma not of our own making. We are led astray by the self-glorification of artists. We should go in another direction: we need portraits of accountants, tram drivers and IT managers in order to bring out the dignity of the kind of work that resists being shaped by its practitioners\u2019 personalities.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Wouter Johannes van Troostwijk","painting_name":"Self-portrait, 1809","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395955569fig.-43---SK-A-4857-00.jpg","stub":"my-job-should-be-more-creative","order":59,"category_name":"Work","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395955569fig.-43---SK-A-4857-00.jpg"}],"anxiety":[{"id":141,"category_id":6,"name":"I can\u2019t bear busy places","description":"You\u2019re in a crowd of hundreds, and you\u2019re looking at a picture of a crowd of people. But there\u2019s a difference. Your crowd is anonymous and the enemy of good things happening. Ideally, you\u2019d like to be alone, while, in the picture, their comradeship is bringing a glow to a dark, rainy day.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nImagine you are with them, part of the Night Watch. You\u2019re going out in dreary weather to deal with the drunks, move on the troublemakers and keep an eye out for thieves and burglars. It\u2019s going to be great. It beats being at home, because you\u2019re doing it with your friends. It\u2019s a picture of how nice it is to be doing something with people you like. The Night Watch \u2013 which is perhaps the most revered picture in the country \u2013 speaks of the appeal of joining in; they are going to do something that is hardly appealing in itself \u2013 patrolling the streets on a foul day \u2013 but how readily we would join them if we could. Companionship is so much more important than ease and comfort.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nIt is a terribly poignant message: for here we are in this room, in a crowd, yet without a collective purpose. They \u2013 in the picture \u2013 are what we should be, and what, in times of honesty, we wish we could be: a band of brothers, a true team, people who will bring out the best in one another. Strange though it might sound, this picture is about loneliness, for it tells us what we are missing when we feel lonely. And getting to know what our loneliness is about is the first step to lessening its pangs.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn","painting_name":"The Night Watch, 1642","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953246fig.-8---SK-C-5-76.jpg","stub":"i-cant-bear-busy-places","order":8,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953246fig.-8---SK-C-5-76.jpg"},{"id":158,"category_id":6,"name":"I feel a desire to rend my cloak","description":"Jeremiah has just heard some terrible news. The city that mattered most to him has been destroyed by the Babylonians (as he\u2019d predicted). They\u2019ve destroyed the temple, kidnapped the king, killed the children and destroyed all the houses.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nJeremiah is trying to understand the way the world works. Like another memorable figure from the Old Testament, Job, he knows there might not always be a proper answer. We are playthings of mysterious forces that exceed us. We must somehow stomach necessity. Why do appalling things happen? Who is to blame? Why did we not act in time? We cast around for explanations. We could so readily turn our misery int o hatred or a furious longing for vengeance; we might get lost in a spiral of regret \u2013 if only this hadn\u2019t happened, if only things had been different, if only I had acted otherwise \u2013 or we could descend to the depths of depression.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nJeremiah is the saint of not going wild with anger \u2013 when it would be so understandable, but not helpful, to do so. We should keep him in our minds \u2013 and Rembrandt helps us to do that \u2013 when faced with our own woes. This lesson matters because we know how readily we can become bitter or brutal, how quickly we get enraged when awful things happen. The picture does not try to lull us with false comforts; it does not pretend that nothing bad has happened. But it provides us with a good model in the most trying of times, when we need all the help we can get to focus on understanding rather than give way to rage and despair.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn","painting_name":"Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem, 1630","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954162fig.-17---SK-A-3276-00.jpg","stub":"i-feel-a-desire-to-rend-my-cloak","order":25,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954162fig.-17---SK-A-3276-00.jpg"},{"id":160,"category_id":6,"name":"I feel lost in the great big world","description":"Art can be sympathetic to our fear of being lost in a complex world by making a smaller and more contained world that we can explore. In real life, the ship would have been filled with officers shouting at the sailors, the swell would have dashed you against the cannons, and the sound of the wind in the sails would have kept you up all night. Moreover, the threat of violent conflict would always have been in the air. But the model allows us to explore all this from a safe distance. You can imagine being inside this little world, setting out on a wonderful voyage. You can be adventurous, yet out of harm\u2019s way.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe desire to turn dangerous things into toys isn\u2019t trivial. It\u2019s a way of taming the world \u2013 and it\u2019s what art (among many other things) does. It domesticates the wildness that might otherwise overwhelm us. By the simple, lovely trick of changing the scale, we make ourselves a bit bigger in relation to our problems. What\u2019s happened with the ship is a trial run for what we need to go on to do with a lot of our challenges.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Adriaen de Vriend & Cornelis Moesman","painting_name":"Model of the \u2018William Rex\u2019, 1698","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954269fig.-20---NG-MC-651.jpg","stub":"i-feel-lost-in-the-great-big-world","order":27,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954269fig.-20---NG-MC-651.jpg"},{"id":161,"category_id":6,"name":"It\u2019s all too much","description":"It looks terrible. How can they survive this? But the boats were designed for this, their hulls were minutely adapted for these conditions. The crew have practised for this kind of weather. This picture is an homage to planning and experience. The older sailors on the ship are saying to the novice, with a laugh, \u2018You know, just last year, off the coast of Jutland, there was one even bigger\u2019 \u2013 and then they slap him on the back with paternal playfulness as the green-faced youth is sick overboard.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWe should feel proud of humanity\u2019s competence and skill in the face of these dreadful \u2013 but strangely also rather awe-inspiring \u2013 challenges. We\u2019 re better able to cope than we might think.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Ludolf Bakhuysen","painting_name":"Warships in a Heavy Storm, 1695","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954291fig.-21---SK-A-4856-00.jpg","stub":"its-all-too-much","order":28,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954291fig.-21---SK-A-4856-00.jpg"},{"id":163,"category_id":6,"name":"My problem is what-if-it-all-goes-wrong-ism","description":"Art rebalances us. The right picture applied to the right mood can bolster dormant aspects of our nature and strengthen inclinations that might otherwise have withered. This is a picture that celebrates adventure. Because different people have different bits missing, we don\u2019t all love the same works of art. This picture isn\u2019t going to be for everyone. But it will move people whose lives have become too routine and who need encouragement to be bolder and to wander off on slightly risky but rewarding journeys.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nAdventure is harder to come by these days. The gorge seen here would today have a railing around it and there might be a motorway in the distance. But the emotional message of the picture remains resonant. If we feel enthusiastic about this image, it may be because deep down we recognize the validity of its invitation to leave the security of home behind for a time.","artist_name":"Jan Both","painting_name":"Italianate Landscape with a Draughtsman,  1652 ","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954422fig.-23---SK-C-109-00.jpg","stub":"my-problem-is-what-if-it-all-goes-wrong-ism","order":30,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954422fig.-23---SK-C-109-00.jpg"},{"id":165,"category_id":6,"name":"I suffer from status anxiety","description":"She\u2019s not overly posh herself, but the room in which she hangs is exceedingly smart, full of shiny, costly things. But she doesn\u2019t seem to mind. Perhaps her parents told her: it\u2019s not what you have, it\u2019s what you are. And the message has inscribed itself on her face. She gazes at the treasures with a certain equanimity. She\u2019s not intimidated, she doesn\u2019t hate her posh friends, the ones who have the kind of luxurious table that\u2019s standing over there. If she changed into modern work clothes, she looks like she\u2019d be a good person to have in a busy office nowadays: straightforward and efficient; you could confide your problems to her and find a sympathetic ear. Because she is sure about who she is, she can listen and find out who you really are.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nStatus matters, we have to let other people know we are important so as not to be overlooked. But we tend to do this by acquiring external markers of worth. She follows the better route: quiet self-confidence and a sure sense of herself.","artist_name":"Isaack Luttichuys","painting_name":"Portrait of a Young Lady, 1656","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954490fig.-25a---SK-C-1477-00.jpg","stub":"i-suffer-from-status-anxiety","order":32,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954490fig.-25a---SK-C-1477-00.jpg"},{"id":180,"category_id":6,"name":"Do not touch any of the objects on display","description":"This room incidentally reminds us that though art was once owned by individuals and was part of their daily life, museums (for understandable enough reasons) can\u2019t allow us to have intimate relationships with works of art. The practicalities of wear and tear \u2013 and the responsibility to preserve the past for future generations \u2013 mean you can\u2019t sit on the chairs or open the curtains.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThis can make the appreciation of art difficult, for it can sometimes be hard to get very much satisfaction out of art that you don\u2019t own and you can\u2019t use. It can feel like looking at someone else\u2019s lunch through the restaurant window.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Rijks Museum","painting_name":"Haarlem reception room, 1794","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954995fig.-35---BK-15613.jpg","stub":"do-not-touch-any-of-the-objects-on-display","order":47,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954995fig.-35---BK-15613.jpg"},{"id":181,"category_id":6,"name":"We are addicted to status","description":"The project of making art \u2013 paintings, sculpture, decorative arts \u2013 has throughout its history been vulnerable to being co-opted into another kind of project, one that is rather more troublesome: that of impressing other people. So much so that for some people, art can seem synonymous with the expression of status.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThis clock is a particularly conspicuous example of the kidnapping of art by the project of status. It can be seen as one more example of greed and compulsive materialism. But it may be better to see it as a poignant case study in psychological vulnerability. How sensitive and exposed you must feel to experience the need to show off with such a clock. The object betrays an intense anxiety that your worth will be missed \u2013 unless endorsed by elaborate painted decoration and two golden putti.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nIf you are slightly repelled by the object as a particularly virulent example of the desperate desire to impress, think of it as a homeopathic dose that will strengthen your antibodies against this innate materialism. There may be no better cure for the disease of status anxiety than to see the clock of someone in its extreme throes.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Louis Montjoye ","painting_name":"Mantle clock, 1782 ","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395955023fig.-36---BK-16672.jpg","stub":"we-are-addicted-to-status","order":48,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395955023fig.-36---BK-16672.jpg"},{"id":188,"category_id":6,"name":"People are so pompous about art","description":"We know they are taking art very seriously, but the picture doesn\u2019t let us into the reasons for their enthusiasm. If you went in and asked the very basic question, \u2018But why is this important?\u2019 you might be met with a frosty stare. You would be left in no doubt that your very enquiry marked you out as unworthy of admission to the temple of art.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe reasons behind art\u2019s prestige have for much of its history been left remarkably undefined \u2013 leaving us to suspect in our more cynical moments that it might have a bit too much to do with social standing and conspicuous consumption. But in truth, we should feel free to ask \u2013 in this room better than anywhere \u2013 what the convincing reasons behind art\u2019s elevated status might rightly be.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nArt matters because it offers us assistance in the project of getting on well with our lives, coping with our sorrows, remembering what matters to us, avoiding what harms us, guiding us to our better natures, rebalancing the excesses of our characters and expanding our sympathies. It\u2019s on this basis that prestige should properly be accorded. The reasons for art\u2019s importance aren\u2019t mysterious; they can be simply stated, and they don\u2019t just belong to a small coterie of the initiated.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Adriaan de Lelie","painting_name":"The Art Gallery of Jan Gildemeester Jansz, 1794-1795","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395955436fig.-39---SK-A-4100-00.jpg","stub":"people-are-so-pompous-about-art","order":55,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395955436fig.-39---SK-A-4100-00.jpg"},{"id":189,"category_id":6,"name":"I don\u2019t know what to do in front of a picture","description":"We\u2019re often not 100% sure what we\u2019re supposed to do in an art museum (other than stay quiet and look out for the artist\u2019s name), and our lack of direction means we easily get bored. But there is one thing in particular we can do to keep ourselves entertained. In public spaces, especially in restaurants and pavement cafes, it can be fun to speculate about what the people around us are like, what their lives might hold, what it might be like to be their friends and how their relationships might be going.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThis kind of speculation is also more than suited to the study of certain pictures in museums. Though this is far from the case now, the value of this activity should be up there with learning dates and historical influences. In the case of this painting, look past the slightly unfamiliar clothes and odd woodland setting, and you have four people who invite, and reward, imaginative enquiry perfectly as to their personalities. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe wife looks like someone who would be unafraid of administrative tasks, tolerant of minor failings (though skilled at knowing when to draw the line), outwardly gentle yet inwardly robust and tough when necessary. She might be just the person with whom to share a somewhat humiliating career anxiety. As for her husband, he seems thoughtful and sensitive while still capable of getting the job done and staying realistic, a balancing act he perhaps got better at pulling off when he married and came under his wife\u2019s good influence. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nThis is only a rough start\u2026you can carry on, here and with other works \u2013 and then the next time you are sitting in a cafe.","artist_name":"Pierre Prud\u2019hon","painting_name":"Portrait of Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck and his Family, 1801-1802","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395955458fig.-40---SK-A-3097-02.jpg","stub":"i-dont-know-what-to-do-in-front-of-a-picture","order":56,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395955458fig.-40---SK-A-3097-02.jpg"},{"id":191,"category_id":6,"name":"What year was this painted in?","description":"Try to stop worrying about who painted this and when. What\u2019s good about this work is primarily the enchanting human dynamics at play. The older boy, delighting in the antics of the little brother, is torn between disciplining him and goading him on. But the child\u2019s naughtiness is motivated by nothing worse than a desire to engage the attention of a much loved \u2013 and eminently lovable \u2013 sensible older sister.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nOrdinary human experience is all we need in order to get to the heart of this work. But, unfortunately, we have tended to hold ourselves back from such projective exercises. We tell ourselves that unless we know the artist, the dates and the stylistic influences, we should keep quiet and study the catalogue.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThis picture isn\u2019t pretending that all children are continuously sweet. But because family life can be very trying, because siblings can be truly mean to one another, the picture tries to keep the best moments of their interaction imaginatively available.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Willem Bartel van der Kooi","painting_name":"Piano Practice Interrupted, 1813","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395955540fig.-42---SK-A-1065-00.jpg","stub":"what-year-was-this-painted-in","order":58,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395955540fig.-42---SK-A-1065-00.jpg"},{"id":193,"category_id":6,"name":"I\u2019m status conscious","description":"It\u2019s been a good year for this couple. They are part of the elite and can afford almost everything the other colonizers have. Though he\u2019s illegitimate, he\u2019s been acknowledged by his father, the Governor General, and lives in his house \u2013 where they have three maids and wallpaper imported from Rotterdam. The dress was a real feat, in the heat as well. Life seems solid. They have a place in the world. They have their own pew at church. Perhaps next year a card will come calling them to one of the smaller dinners.","artist_name":"John L. Riker ","painting_name":"Portrait of a Couple in Suriname, 1846","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395955610fig.-44---RP-F-BR-2009-1.jpg","stub":"im-status-conscious","order":60,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395955610fig.-44---RP-F-BR-2009-1.jpg"},{"id":211,"category_id":6,"name":"I\u2019ve got to admire everything ","description":"If we\u2019re honest about how we feel in museums, we have to admit that quite a lot of the objects leave us cold \u2013 and our thoughts turn eagerly to the possibilities of cake in the cafe. That\u2019s OK and compatible with being a good person \u2013 and being interested in and responsive to art. What makes an artwork great is what it can do for you. Life is short and not all artworks are doing things that you need. We tend to blame ourselves if we feel bored in an art gallery \u2013 but boredom can be an insight: a signal to yourself that nothing worthwhile for you is on offer. We are shy about recognizing the individuality of our responses to art. The prestige of art doesn\u2019t help us with this.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nIt\u2019s quite possible that this work \u2013 which would be highly relevant to those who suspect their lives may be suffering from too much partying \u2013 isn\u2019t speaking to your dilemmas. So you should move on without guilt. If you haven\u2019t got that disease, you don\u2019t need this medicine.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Lucas van Leyden","painting_name":"Worship of the Golden Calf, 1530","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/139544242916.jpg","stub":"ive-got-to-admire-everything","order":78,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/139544242916.jpg"},{"id":214,"category_id":6,"name":"I am overcome by catastrophic foreboding","description":"It\u2019s testimony to how large a theme anxiety is, and how bad we are at dealing with it, that one of the world\u2019s major religions is dedicated to its containment. Buddhism seeks to free its followers from unhelpful worry. It raises the attempt to attain calm to an art form \u2013 worthy of the highest admiration and devotion.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThis is the head of someone who excelled at reducing his own anxiety. Nobody really knows what features the Buddha had, so the artist has devoted his considerable skill to imagining a face that shows us what freedom from anxiety might look like. We\u2019re being invited to look at the face with a desire to become like it is, to share the quality of mind it exhibits. The statue is arguing that it\u2019s not enough just to hear what the Buddha said; we should use our visual responsiveness to implant his philosophy of calm more deeply in our lives. This sounds weird, but it is something we do anyway without noticing. We are attuned to the faces around us and pick up on the emotional signals that emanate from them. Spending time with the right faces is a very good idea, for we will become a little of what they already are.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Head of a Buddha, Indonesia, c. 800-850","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395956739fig.-65---AK-MAK-239.jpg","stub":"i-am-overcome-catastrophic-foreboding","order":81,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395956739fig.-65---AK-MAK-239.jpg"},{"id":215,"category_id":6,"name":"I can\u2019t cope","description":"Here we\u2019re a long way culturally from the Christian story, so what\u2019s surprising and intriguing is that we can observe very similar needs being addressed in very similar ways. The Buddhist deity Guanyin was the saviour of people in peril. Until the 14th century, he was represented as a man, later as a woman. Like Jesus or the Virgin Mary, Guanyin fulfilled the related roles of hearing us in our distress, meeting us with tenderness and strengthening us to face the tasks of life.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe centrality of such figures in the Buddhist and Christian outlooks suggests that all mature lives will involve moments of deep self-doubt, and feelings that one cannot cope alone. It\u2019s not a sign we have failed as a human to be overwhelmed by a need for reassurance.<br \/>\nModern society struggles to update what this figure represents and to provide a contemporary version of the publicly available nurturing \u2018mother\u2019.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Guanyin, 12th century","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395956795fig.-66---AK-MAK-84.jpg","stub":"i-cant-cope","order":82,"category_name":"Anxiety","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395956795fig.-66---AK-MAK-84.jpg"}],"self":[{"id":135,"category_id":2,"name":"I have a misplaced longing for glamour","description":"On this wall, probably behind three rows of people, hangs one of the most famous works of art in the world. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nThis is bad news. The extreme fame of a work of art is almost always unhelpful because, to touch us, art has to elicit a personal response \u2013 and that\u2019s hard when a painting is said to be so distinguished. This painting is quite out of synch with its status in any case because, above all else, it wants to show us that the ordinary can be very special. The picture says that looking after a simple but beautiful home, cleaning the yard, watching over the children, darning clothes \u2013 and doing these things faithfully and without despair \u2013 is life\u2019s real duty. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nThis is an anti-heroic picture, a weapon against false images of glamour. It refuses to accept that true glamour depends on amazing feats of courage or on the attainment of status. It argues that doing the modest things that are expected of all of us is enough. The picture asks you to be a little like it is: to take the attitudes it loves and to apply them to your life. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nIf the Netherlands had a Founding Document, a concentrated repository of its values, it would be this small picture. It is the Dutch contribution to the world\u2019s understanding of happiness \u2013 and its message doesn\u2019t just belong in the gallery.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Johannes Vermeer","painting_name":"View of Houses in Delft, Known as \u2018The Little Street\u2019, 1658","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953044fig.-2---SK-A-2860-00.jpg","stub":"i-have-a-misplaced-longing-for-glamour","order":2,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953044fig.-2---SK-A-2860-00.jpg"},{"id":138,"category_id":2,"name":"I suffer from fragility","description":"You are probably a bit like this picture. There are sides of you that are a little debauched. Perhaps you drink, have some mildly compulsive behaviours, are not always \u2018good\u2019. You are, in the language of this work of art, a greedy child.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nAnd we sometimes get very disturbed by this and extremely self-critical. But of course \u2013 and this is what we are apt to underestimate \u2013 you are also very decent and reasonable in many other parts of your life. Jan Steen is proposing integration of the troubling aspects with the rest of what you are like. You don\u2019t fit so neatly on either Santa\u2019s naughty or nice list. You can be both: good and sometimes quite bad. And he is asking us to be less alarmed by this feature of the human condition.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe painting rehearses, for us, a generous, constructive response to weakness. It keeps clearly in mind that the adult world is robust and resilient. A naughty child who, on Christmas morning or for the feast of St. Nicholas, finds that Santa Claus has left him a piece of coal or a willow branch in his shoe or stocking should not cause undue anxiety. The good order of the world is not really going to collapse because of one transgression. As the crying boy\u2019s grandmother points out, he probably hasn\u2019t been forgotten after all: there\u2019s a present under his pillow. This is what we need to learn to do with ourselves: to be a little less panicked and not so disturbed by our occasional follies.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Jan Havicksz Steen","painting_name":"The Feast of St Nicholas, 1665-1668","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953116fig.-5---SK-A-385-00.jpg","stub":"i-suffer-from-fragility","order":5,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953116fig.-5---SK-A-385-00.jpg"},{"id":139,"category_id":2,"name":"I\u2019m too ordinary for special things to happen to me","description":"Because this picture hangs in the Rijksmuseum and because we have, perhaps, seen it many times before on postcards or in books, we might make the mistake of thinking that, of course, what Ruisdael shows us is beautiful. But look again. It is a scene we would not admire if we were to drive past it, or see it in a news report. We would probably think things like: what a horrible gloomy day, I wish the sun were shining; it\u2019s a disgrace that windmill has fallen into disrepair; God, the river is so slimy and disgusting.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nAnd yet, something remarkable is happening in the picture. The artist, we feel, is aware of life\u2019s problems but isn\u2019t dwelling on them. Instead, Ruisdael wants to bring out what is loveable and good here. He looks with devotion to the best that the world has to offer, when this is not obvious. So he is doing an essential thing: helping us to love something by looking with generosity at its best features. We aren\u2019t going to be artists, but we need to do a little of what he did. Because the horrible features of the world are so readily perceived, it is essential for our sanity and well-being that we learn how to see the less obvious \u2013 but real \u2013 good sides. Like a loving parent, he doesn\u2019t just love the accomplishments, success and perfection. He is drawn to seek out the secret beauty of things that others would pass by with a shrug. This is a radical, political picture, a manifesto.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael","painting_name":"The Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede, 1670","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953213fig.-6---SK-C-211-00.jpg","stub":"im-too-ordinary-for-special-things-to-happen-to-me","order":6,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953213fig.-6---SK-C-211-00.jpg"},{"id":142,"category_id":2,"name":"I couldn\u2019t hurt a flea","description":"It was a fantastic day; we smashed them to smithereens; we blew them thirty feet into the air; their brains went everywhere; my friend gouged out some guy\u2019s eye. We won. We totally owned them.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nIn its raw, energetic triumphalism, the picture gives a corrective nudge to our present attitudes. We are so conscious that thuggish people must never be encouraged that decent people have learned all too well to suppress their own appetite for a fight, their own desire for victory. But in a world where conflict is unavoidable, good people need to strengthen their willingness to face down opposition \u2013 not always to compromise and play it safe, but to take risks instead, to relish victory and to be a bit more ruthless in the service of noble and deeply important ends. Sometimes it is not enough to be right, you also need to win.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe picture is frank about pride in achievement. The naval battle, which was hideous in reality, was crucial to the formation of a free and secure society. It took great courage, great readiness to face danger and desperate resolution to win in order to bring about that historic development. Today \u2013 obviously \u2013 the enemy is not a foreign fleet and the battles are not fought with cannonballs and gunpowder. But how many great things have been lost to the world because their originators \u2013 while having the requisite insight \u2013 lacked the sheer courage and force of character to see them through? Goodness should be strong.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen","painting_name":"The Explosion of the Spanish Flagship during the Battle of Gibraltar, 1621","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953266fig.-9---SK-A-2163-00.jpg","stub":"i-couldnt-hurt-a-flea","order":9,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953266fig.-9---SK-A-2163-00.jpg"},{"id":147,"category_id":2,"name":"Nothing interesting ever happens to me","description":"We\u2019ve all known nights a bit like this. The ordinary preoccupations of the day recede and, away from the familiarity of home, you access unfamiliar, yet important, parts of yourself. You feel a freshness and openness to new experiences. You feel curious, unafraid and thoughtful, out there in the world at 3 a.m.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe artist is trying to hold on to a mood of heightened consciousness at being alone in a strange, unfamiliar, beautiful world. We feel (as we didn\u2019t during the bustling hours of the day), how odd it is to be alive and how peculiar it is to walk this earth. The majesty of the evening may prompt what could be called a religious impulse. This isn\u2019t a desire to join an established religion, but to find some way of expressing the strange, and powerful, conjunction of an awareness of our own isolation and fragility and \u2013 at the same time \u2013 our intense love of the beauty of the cosmos. It is an impulse that religions have taken seriously (although they have often interpreted it in unfortunate ways). It is a mood that we all know but generally neglect. We don\u2019t go there enough; we leave it to chance. We should be more strategic and set up the opportunity: \u2018There\u2019s a bright moon tomorrow, let\u2019s go for a walk by the river at 11.15 in the evening\u2019.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe picture bottles the mood and helps us remember it (getting the postcard might quickly return us to it). It makes it communicable: in the future you might be able to say, I had a Van der Neerish experience \u2013 and a friend who had seen the picture would understand.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Aert van der Neer","painting_name":"River View by Moonlight, 1650","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953372fig.-14---SK-A-3245-00.jpg","stub":"nothing-interesting-ever-happens-to-me","order":14,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953372fig.-14---SK-A-3245-00.jpg"},{"id":157,"category_id":2,"name":"I feel overlooked","description":"Look up at the two middle pictures, high on the opposite wall. Thousands of men died to establish these outposts. For decades, they traded, hoed the ground, sat on committees and died in these parts of the Dutch empire. An artist painted a lovely memorial to them \u2013 and now no one cares very much. You might easily have walked right past them, if this caption wasn\u2019t here.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThere\u2019s a lot in the Rijksmuseum that\u2019s overlooked. There always is in life. We are short of attention, we can\u2019t see everything. That\u2019s how it goes. And of course it is not only artworks that get ignored; the world frequently pays only minimal attention to us as individuals. The complex details of our existence, the dramas of our daily lives, the whole long novel of experience we carry around in our heads \u2013 none of this may be much noticed by other people. We are a bit like one of these paintings, under-appreciated in a crowded world.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nIt\u2019s not their fault: the pictures are not overlooked because they bad \u2013 it\u2019s just that they are in such a competitive place that (at this moment) they are not conspicuous. They have much merit but very little fame. Yet, if a strange turn of fate led them to being offered for sale in an upmarket commercial gallery, they might be the star pieces with huge price tags.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nAnd this is a hopeful thought. We can be agents of justice by giving our attention more generously, by learning to notice the less obvious, but genuinely lovely, things. This is what art does. It stops us, it helps us to notice things. We should take away its general lesson and not walk past so much.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Johannes Vinckboons","painting_name":"View of Canton in China and View of Judea, the Capital of Siam, 1663","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953765fig.-18a---SK-A-4474-00.jpg","stub":"i-feel-overlooked","order":24,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953765fig.-18a---SK-A-4474-00.jpg"},{"id":174,"category_id":2,"name":"I\u2019m too mature to like pretty things","description":"This is just the sort of teapot that led to the emergence of modernism. It would have enraged the early modernists, for they wanted a world stripped bare, where everything had a clear function. So what on earth is the purpose of a Chinese-style bird or flower decoration on a teapot? Does it help you to pour tea?<br \/>\n<br \/>\nBut it does have a function, just an emotional rather than a practical one. So much of tenderness and love is about going beyond what is strictly necessary. It\u2019s never strictly necessary to love another person \u2013 nor necessary to paint a blue tree on the side of a teapot. Decoration is an emblem of generosity. For us, this is a breakfast-table temple to care and love (even if tea was not yet a breakfast drink when it was made!). It offers a small intervention in life \u2013 to lift our spirits just a tiny bit at the right moment. We\u2019re not asking it to bear the world on its fragile spout.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nPrettiness gets a bad press. People like pretty things, but sometimes feel they shouldn\u2019t. Surely too many terrible things are happening. Prettiness can feel like it\u2019s just a sweet distraction that saps our will to reform the world and face up to reality. But the teapot knows that there will always be time for bad news. So for a moment, over breakfast, it makes a place for solace and cheerfulness.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"De Metalen Pot ","painting_name":"Teapot, 1690","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954703fig.-29---BK-1975-73.jpg","stub":"im-too-mature-to-like-pretty-things","order":41,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954703fig.-29---BK-1975-73.jpg"},{"id":190,"category_id":2,"name":"I\u2019m more into facts","description":"This intriguing scientific instrument reminds us of something that the Enlightenment kept well in mind but we have rather neglected: that our reasons for liking art and science can be remarkably similar. When this model of the heavens was made, art and science were understood to be cousins, with interest in one leading naturally to the other. The reasons for being interested in science were not so dissimilar to the motives for turning to art: a search for beauty and a taste for a grander order of things that could put our lives into consoling and encouraging context. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nScientific work was not reserved for the laboratory; it could enter daily life and be a talking point over dinner. You didn\u2019t need to understand every last detail to feel that you had the right to join in; you could have an aesthetic relationship with science \u2013 a possibility neglected in our times, but helpfully pointed out by this model of the solar system. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe object signals that it\u2019s not enough for a scientific theory to be true: complex concepts (in this case the movements of the planets) need to be presented with elegance and charm if they are to live as they should in our imaginations. We need today\u2019s scientists to hang out a little more with artists.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Hartog van Laun","painting_name":"Table orrery, 1808","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395955490fig.-41---NG-NM-11700.jpg","stub":"im-more-into-facts","order":57,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395955490fig.-41---NG-NM-11700.jpg"},{"id":194,"category_id":2,"name":"You have to plan for the future","description":"Grandma and Grandpa weren\u2019t a barrel of laughs. It hardly needs to be stressed: you can see it. She was a god-fearing woman; he had a terrible temper. One time, he struck her hard across the face. He was drunk. Everyone heard downstairs. He apologised later. She became more taciturn after that, though she had her moments of joy too. She\u2019d sing while clearing the kitchen and always baked quince jelly in the autumn and gave little pots to the local children. After his accident, he mellowed; they accepted each other\u2019s faults a little more.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThey\u2019d be amazed to know that people were looking at them in a big museum, surrounded by guards and tourists and masterpieces. They were private people, shy, never ones to speak too loud in public, farming people. What will we be, to the generations we can\u2019t even imagine, staring at us in their futuristic museums?<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Anonymous American ","painting_name":"Portrait of a Man and Portrait of a Woman, 1859","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395955687fig.-45-NEW---RP-F-F17800-A.jpg","stub":"you-have-to-plan-for-the-future","order":61,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395955687fig.-45-NEW---RP-F-F17800-A.jpg"},{"id":195,"category_id":2,"name":"Death happens to other people","description":"He got a doctorate from Amsterdam. She became a piano teacher, mostly young children. He married a French girl the family wasn\u2019t too happy with. They had seven children, three lived. She married a poet, it was a sorry story, there were no children. He\u2019s 63 now, she a couple of years younger. He can still remember that day, how long they had to stand, the need to suppress their giggles, and how they went to have some sherbert afterwards at Aunt Klaartje\u2019s house.","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Portrait of a Young Boy and Girl, 1845","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395955772RP-F-F14430-A.jpg","stub":"death-happens-to-other-people","order":62,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395955772RP-F-F14430-A.jpg"},{"id":198,"category_id":2,"name":"I believe you can control your destiny","description":"It took ages to persuade her to be still; you can see from the impish expression that being quiet isn\u2019t her thing. She asks a lot of questions. She is in a geography phase, wants to know all the capitals. Before that she was into measuring, then there were the fish she wanted to collect and the earthworms. Her arms have tiny little hairs on them that stick up when she\u2019s cold. She loves to throw them around you and hug tight. You can hear that throaty laugh of hers from the end of the garden gate. When she\u2019s asleep, you love to watch her breathe softly, wondering what will become of your little Totte. ","artist_name":"Charlotte Asser","painting_name":"Portrait of the Photographer\u2019s Daughter, 1842 ","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395955959RP-F-AB12282.jpg","stub":"i-believe-you-can-control-your-destiny","order":65,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395955959RP-F-AB12282.jpg"},{"id":204,"category_id":2,"name":"I have this fear of being a sissy","description":"We\u2019ve seen this kind of thing so many times, it\u2019s easy to get anaesthetized to what\u2019s actually going on: a mummy is being really nice to her young child \u2013 and this has been commemorated in a highly prestigious public object, created by one of the most talented people of the time and endorsed by the most powerful public institutions.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nSuch an object subtly responds to our emotional needs. It knows that we might all still long to be mothered, even though we are adults. We might still need a great deal of reassurance and kindness. So much of growing up is about becoming independent and getting by without the comfort on offer here. Being a mummy\u2019s boy remains a stinging insult to our autonomy. But this is an exaggerated repudiation of an important need.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe statue offers comfort by proxy: in our imagination we can get close to Mary without having to give up the hard-won advantages of adult life (this is helped by the fact that the baby looks about 27). The longing that might otherwise unman us, that could undermine our claims to an adult identity, finds a safe and acceptable home.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Virgin and Child, 1424","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395956327fig.-56---BK-NM-11912.jpg","stub":"i-have-this-fear-of-being-a-sissy","order":71,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395956327fig.-56---BK-NM-11912.jpg"},{"id":217,"category_id":2,"name":"I\u2019m a bit of a pushover","description":"Most things in museums set out to look as nice as possible but this gentleman hs got a different priority in mind. He is doing everything he can to look terrifying and revolting \u2013 there\u2019s something endearingly exaggerated about him, like a five-year-old child pretending to be a monster.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWe\u2019ve gone so far down the track of teaching ourselves about the importance of civility, we\u2019ve unwittingly developed a problem around certain forms of self-assertion and resistance to the demands of others. These guardians remind us that fierceness is valuable when deployed in the service of something good (here, reverence for gods and beloved ancestors) \u2013 but, sadly, it usually isn\u2019t.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nSometimes the help we need involves comfort, counselling and reassurance, but at other points what we really need is help in exercising our right to say no in an effective way.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Temple Guardian, Japan, 14th century","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395956858fig.-68a---AK-RAK-2007-1-A.jpg","stub":"im-a-bit-of-a-pushover","order":84,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395956858fig.-68a---AK-RAK-2007-1-A.jpg"},{"id":219,"category_id":2,"name":"People were very different in the past","description":"She could walk out and come to the cafe with you. It would be a bit formal at first, but she\u2019d relax and let you order her some tea and a piece of apple pie of (she never had any). She could loosen her hair. You might be surprised how she\u2019d look once it was flowing more freely. You might want to take her to H&M. She would look nice in a white tshirt and black shorts and even some simple Nikes. Perhaps she\u2019d come jogging. You might want to take her out for a drink and see where it goes. She\u2019s kind of cute, in an unconventional way. You feel intelligent for seeing her charms.","artist_name":"Albertus Pieterse","painting_name":"Portrait of a Young Woman, 1860","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395956153RP-F-F14459-A.jpg","stub":"people-were-very-different-in-the-past","order":86,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395956153RP-F-F14459-A.jpg"},{"id":220,"category_id":2,"name":"Don\u2019t be so defensive","description":"Armour is nicely honest about our wish not to get hurt. The makers have gone to extraordinary trouble to protect every last joint and tender surface of the body from a stray arrow or savagely wielded axe. It\u2019s frank about danger. It doesn\u2019t pretend that it\u2019s a good idea, or a sign of bravery, to expose yourself to risk. It knows that life is dangerous enough anyway. In an ideal world we might like to open the cabinet and try it on \u2013 one might feel as safe as being a baby, but in an iron casing instead of a comfy sling.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nNowadays the risks to our safety are not from a heavy mace or a lance. The perils we face are more psychological, but our need for safety is just as great. And the need for ingenuity in responding to risk persists. We need the new makers of armour to protect us from the modern equivalent of the flanged mace or a deadly thrust from a halberd.","artist_name":"Armour of Pankraz von Freyberg","painting_name":"1500-ca. 1550","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1400671675NG-NM-11098.jpg","stub":"dont-be-so-defensive","order":87,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1400671675NG-NM-11098.jpg"},{"id":228,"category_id":2,"name":"I like my art to be \u2018about\u2019 things","description":"Unlike most things in this museum, these shapes don\u2019t mean one thing in particular, but our minds can make something of them nevertheless; that\u2019s one of the powers of stylized patterns, whether or not based on natural forms. So what is it \u2018about\u2019? Like music, it speaks in non-specific way, and yet it can touch our emotional chords.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe pattern seems to hit the mark exactly between our need for spontaneity and our need for coherence. So often we tend to one extreme or the other: we vigorously pursue order, but become clinical and impatient with the ordinary confusion of life. Or we abandon ourselves to chance and whim, but end up lost and confused. This little piece of fabric seems to show the vitality of life contained within the order of reason. It is a metaphor for so much: a good relationship, a great conversation, the dynamics of an orchestra, even a family. It induces a mood of serene pleasure in the interplay of complexity and order.","artist_name":"Chris Lebeau","painting_name":"Fabric covering","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/14017355614.jpg","stub":"i-like-my-art-to-be-about-things","order":93,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/14017355614.jpg"},{"id":229,"category_id":2,"name":"Art can\u2019t be about my life","description":"We\u2019re still oddly flattered and touched by the thought that something we might possess \u2013 or might have seen in a friend\u2019s apartment \u2013 can have the honour of a place in the Rijksmuseum.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe task of the museum isn\u2019t to show us things that are simply old or rare \u2013 that\u2019s only an accidental feature of something more important, which is to show us what is good and can have a power to excite and help us.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nIdeally, the things in museums shouldn\u2019t be rare at all. We might be able to buy them in a shop down the road.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWe are confused about the merits of rarity. Because good things are in short supply, we might unreasonably conclude that being in short supply is a requirement, a sign, of quality. We start to get impressed by rarity itself. This is an unfortunate habit of mind. Actually we should resent rarity, we should hope instead that what we admire and like is as widely and easily available as a simple office chair.","artist_name":"Gerrit and Wim Rietveld","painting_name":"Prototype of the \u2018Mondial\u2019 chair","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/14017356335.jpg","stub":"art-cant-be-about-my-life","order":94,"category_name":"Self","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/14017356335.jpg"}],"money":[{"id":145,"category_id":4,"name":"I can\u2019t stand all this consumerism","description":"It\u2019s easy to feel that consumerism is probably a bit evil. Yet consumerism doesn\u2019t have to be stupid (though it currently often is). This picture takes us to an instructive time when abundance was new and not to be taken for granted. The picture knows it was hard to get that lobster. The first audiences for such pictures as this were still amazed \u2013 as we should be \u2013 that humans could control the world enough to have lobster in a lemon-butter dressing and pigeon pie, and that one could get all those varieties of cheese. To produce what\u2019s depicted in such pictures, marshes had to be drained, cattle fed through the winter; lemons had to be carried by donkey from the Neapolitan hills down to the harbour, to leaky wooden ships that had to brave storms and struggle with unreliable winds. The original audience knew how hard all this was, how astonishing it was that human beings could do this. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nWe are so afraid of greed that we forget how honourable the love of material things can be; in 1644, homage could still be paid to the nobility of commerce. Boredom and guilt make this less accessible to us now. Perhaps we can learn from the picture. A good response to anxiety about consumerism isn\u2019t to live without lobster and lemons, but to appreciate what really needs to go into providing these at a fair price. Our desire to have luxury cheaply is the real problem \u2013 to care only for low prices. If the route to your table were dignified and honourable at every stage, a lemon would \u2013 of course \u2013 cost more. But maybe then we would stop taking it for granted and our appreciation of its zest would be all the keener.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Adriaen van Utrecht","painting_name":"Banquet Still Life, 1644","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953336fig.-12---SK-C-301-00.jpg","stub":"i-cant-stand-all-this-consumerism","order":12,"category_name":"Money","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953336fig.-12---SK-C-301-00.jpg"},{"id":216,"category_id":4,"name":"I can\u2019t afford nice things","description":"It\u2019s secretly exciting that a highly sophisticated and evolved culture concentrated some of its big ideas about itself not in the production of awesomely complicated, grand objects, but in small, simple items of great refinement. Are they so very different from things that we might pick up for a few euros at the HEMA department store?<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe bowl is telling us that things can be precious for the purity and elegance of their form, not just because they may or may not be financially valuable \u2013 and this is very good news for a world in which hardly anyone has lots of money. <br \/>\n","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Dish, 1200-ca. 1300","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395956825fig.-67---AK-MAK-1278.jpg","stub":"i-cant-afford-nice-things","order":83,"category_name":"Money","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395956825fig.-67---AK-MAK-1278.jpg"}],"free-time":[{"id":134,"category_id":5,"name":"Art is for the weekend","description":"This museum was designed in the nineteenth century to function as a replacement for the old cathedrals: it was to be a cathedral of art. Culture was to replace scripture. The ambition was huge: art would bring us meaning, consolation, direction and comfort, just as the pages of the Bible once had.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWe in the modern world still love art \u2013 but in a different way: more modestly, more tentatively. If you started crying in front of a picture in this museum, you would be thought a little odd and perhaps led outside by a guard. It is perhaps symptomatic of this cooler modern approach to art that this hall was literally whitewashed beginning in the 1920s. It was a way of brushing off too close an analogy with religion \u2013 especially in a Protestant country where the de facto state religion was Calvinism (and the over-ostentatious \u2018cathedral of art\u2019 had been designed by a Catholic!). It was, moreover, a way of saying that art should be kept free of ideology, and removed from day-to-day life and issues of redemption and meaning. Art should be enjoyed \u2018for art\u2019s sake\u2019.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nSome of us are starting to realize that this was a terrible mistake. This show is a symptom of that collective realization. We are learning to appreciate once more the old ambition that art might heal our souls and show us how to live. In restoring this Great Hall to its original design, the museum has restored the memory of a grand and very important ambition. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nArt can tell us how to live. It should heal us: it isn\u2019t an intellectual exercise, an abstract aesthetic arena or a distraction for a Sunday afternoon.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Rijks Museum","painting_name":"Entrance Hall","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953026fig.-1----Jannes-Linders---Voorhal.jpg","stub":"art-is-for-the-weekend","order":1,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953026fig.-1----Jannes-Linders---Voorhal.jpg"},{"id":146,"category_id":5,"name":"I try not to think too much about the meaning of life","description":"The picture was painted with satirical intent. It was designed to show up \u2013 and elegantly mock \u2013 an obsession with religious difference and to tease contemporaries for their over-zealous desire to convert each other to their favoured brand of Christianity. Yet, for us moderns, the scene may be more moving than ridiculous. For these are people who really worried about the state of their souls and the spiritual well-being of their fellow citizens. They cared so much that they could launch feeble boats into a treacherous river and try to haul their compatriots from the waters.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe details of their beliefs, no doubt, may strike us as strange. But even if you don\u2019t think you have a soul, their dedication is inspiring. For what\u2019s secretly thrilling is the intensity with which they cared about their inner lives. They thought it really mattered what big beliefs you have, and how these guide your conduct. What you thought about love, duty, goodness, forgiveness, repentance, sorrow and the fear of death was felt to be crucially important, demanding radical action. Ideas were an arena of intense competition.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWe don\u2019t want to copy them, but we do want to recognize that they were onto something (even if not in what we might consider the right way). They were taking the life of the mind and soul seriously \u2013 as we should continue to do today.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne","painting_name":"Fishing for Souls, 1614","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395953353fig.-13---SK-A-447-00.jpg","stub":"i-try-not-to-think-too-much-about-the-meaning-of-life","order":13,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395953353fig.-13---SK-A-447-00.jpg"},{"id":159,"category_id":5,"name":"Another cold, rainy day in Amsterdam ","description":"The weather is perfect, you can stroll in simple clothes under the trees, ignore the demands of work and the law, and laze about; it\u2019s all so fresh and simple. There\u2019s always an \u2018elsewhere\u2019: we long to go to places that promise to make us happy. Dreams that sound unrealistic feel embarrassing, but they should be taken seriously. Always being \u2018practical\u2019 means that good insights sometimes get closed down too soon. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe picture is officially about seventeenth-century Brazil, but it speaks of things that we want here and now: sex without emotional entanglement, time just to be yourself, a sense of adventure, not feeling responsible for the big, awkward things in the world (overfishing the seas, renewable energy). But you might need to look at a picture of Brazil to awaken the yearning for these legitimate aspects of life. The problem probably isn\u2019t geography. But geography can help us to grasp our needs.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Frans Jansz Post","painting_name":"View of Olinda, Brazil, 1662","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954393SK-A-742-00.jpg","stub":"another-cold-rainy-day-in-amsterdam","order":26,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954393SK-A-742-00.jpg"},{"id":166,"category_id":5,"name":"I\u2019m too old for toys","description":"Children are naturally able to project themselves into different roles, across what might initially seem like very fundamental barriers: a sweet five-year-old can get into the persona of a bloodthirsty pirate without trouble.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWe have multiple layers: there are many people we might have been, had life prompted us in different ways. Reconnecting with toys lets us try out parts of ourselves that don\u2019t normally get an airing. These parts might be quite unusual. With this dolls\u2019 house, you can play at being:<br \/>\n- a dignified sea captain of 52 recently returned from Java<br \/>\n- a docile scullery maid who was abandoned at birth by her alcoholic mother<br \/>\n- a cross dowager with chilblains and a sour temper but a fondness for little dogs<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe dolls\u2019 house is an emblem of art: it enables you to try things out before living them.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Dolls\u2019 House of Petronella Oortman, 1710","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954511fig.-26---BK-NM-1010.jpg","stub":"im-too-old-for-toys","order":33,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954511fig.-26---BK-NM-1010.jpg"},{"id":177,"category_id":5,"name":"I\u2019m too creative to tidy my room","description":"Putting things away on shelves hardly sounds glamorous. A little mess and chaos still seems connected to creativity and imagination. This cabinet thinks otherwise \u2013 and is eloquent on the pleasures of ordering and organizing and putting everything in its proper place. The grandeur of this piece of furniture and the expensive materials from which it is constructed have an important point to make: good order and clear organization are noble accomplishments, worthy of our deepest respect. It invites us to sample the pleasures of the storeroom, and to instil more order in bigger parts of our mind.","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Apothecary cabinet, 1730","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954821fig.-32---BK-1956-44.jpg","stub":"im-too-creative-to-tidy-my-room","order":44,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954821fig.-32---BK-1956-44.jpg"},{"id":178,"category_id":5,"name":"The world is always to hand","description":"Unfortunately, it now takes only three hours to get to Istanbul from Amsterdam\u2019s Schiphol Airport. Back then, it took six months or more \u2013 and you might never make it home. Ease of travel has, paradoxically, made it harder to appreciate the wonder and beauty of the world. This painting is imbued with pride, immortalizing the astonishing view of the Bosphorus from the dining room of the Dutch embassy in Constantinople during the mid-18th century. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nOur globalized world has made many good things more available, but one thing it has placed under threat is our ability to appreciate the qualities of other lands. Of course, the city now called Istanbul is really just as fascinating as ever \u2013 it\u2019s just that our capacity to notice this has been, unwittingly, undermined by modern air travel. Art is one mechanism by which we might become alive again to the charms of \u2018abroad\u2019.","artist_name":"Jean Baptiste Vanmour","painting_name":"View of Istanbul from the Dutch Embassy at Pera, 1737 ","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395954871SK-A-4084.jpg","stub":"the-world-is-always-to-hand","order":45,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395954871SK-A-4084.jpg"},{"id":197,"category_id":5,"name":"I\u2019m not so into family","description":"The attack came very suddenly. She was on her feet and helping to prepare dinner on the Sunday. She complained only of a light cough on the Monday. And then this. Most of the family won\u2019t be able to make it to see her in time. That\u2019s why they called on the man with the machine, though he smelt of cigars and knocked the furniture about a bit. She hardly felt a thing, she just held Marieke\u2019s hand and smiled, a little like she is in the picture. We\u2019ll miss her so much.","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Post-mortem Portrait of an Old Woman, 1850","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1396259098RP-F-F14377.jpg","stub":"im-not-so-into-family","order":64,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1396259098RP-F-F14377.jpg"},{"id":200,"category_id":5,"name":"I like my art to be \u2018about\u2019 things","description":"Unlike most things in this museum, these shapes don\u2019t mean one thing in particular, but our minds can make something of them nevertheless; that\u2019s one of the powers of stylized patterns, whether or not based on natural forms.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nSo what is it \u2018about\u2019? Like music, it speaks in non-specific way, and yet it can touch our emotional chords.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe pattern seems to hit the mark exactly between our need for spontaneity and our need for coherence. So often we tend to one extreme or the other: we vigorously pursue order, but become clinical and impatient with the ordinary confusion of life. Or we abandon ourselves to chance and whim, but end up lost and confused.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThis little piece of fabric seems to show the vitality of life contained within the order of reason. It is a metaphor for so much: a good relationship, a great conversation, the dynamics of an orchestra, even a family. It induces a mood of serene pleasure in the interplay of complexity and order.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Chris Lebeau","painting_name":"Fabric covering, 1911-1915","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395956073BK-1971-151-B.jpg","stub":"i-like-my-art-to-be-about-things","order":67,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395956073BK-1971-151-B.jpg"},{"id":201,"category_id":5,"name":"What next, a washing machine in a museum?","description":"Machines have of late so spoilt the earth, it can be hard to feel well disposed towards them, let alone welcome them into an august cathedral of art. But, of course, at their best, machines exhibit many of the same qualities as works of art (balance, the harmony of parts, the subordination of detail to an overall purpose, a triumph of logic over fear and chaos). We shouldn\u2019t be surprised if we sometimes have moments of strangely powerful aesthetic delight in the presence of machines. To think well of art, we don\u2019t need to do down machines.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nMachines have a purpose: they are for something. Everything about a plane is carefully adapted to improve its capacity for controlled flight. Because we know what it is for, the design makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, the supposed divide between art and machines can lead to the neglect of purpose in art. We are much less ready than we should be to ask what an artwork is for. One of the ambitions of this project is to encourage the idea that works of art have more in common with machines than is usually thought. That, in addition to their original function, they can be psychological machines to help us live the lives we want is often overlooked.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Frits Koolhoven","painting_name":"F.K. 23 Bantam, 1918","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395956227fig.-48---NG-2011-1.jpg","stub":"what-next-a-washing-machine-in-a-museum","order":68,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395956227fig.-48---NG-2011-1.jpg"},{"id":202,"category_id":5,"name":"I\u2019m fed up with celebrity culture","description":"The idea of imitating a celebrity has slavish associations nowadays. It feels humiliating. Why should we be so impressed by their doings? So it\u2019s fascinating to come across Saint Agnes. She was a celebrity follower of early Christianity. That someone of her status and good looks should be convinced of Jesus\u2019s teachings was a matter of intense public gossip. It seemed shocking that a religion that was, at that point, mainly for outcasts and slaves should have attracted her attention and devotion. She was pilloried by the establishment and died at the hands of some thuggish aristocrats.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nRather than expect celebrities to inspire our choice of shoes or a restaurant, we should want them to guide us to virtue. Agnes\u2019s example of kindness, integrity and courage points the way to a new use for celebrity. We should not reject the impulse to excited admiration just because it is currently abused. We should recruit it to more elevated and useful ends. A saint was just someone famous for being genuinely admirable.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Adriaen van Wesel","painting_name":"Saint Agnes, 1480","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395956260fig.-54---BK-KOG-1732.jpg","stub":"im-fed-up-with-celebrity-culture","order":69,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395956260fig.-54---BK-KOG-1732.jpg"},{"id":203,"category_id":5,"name":"I\u2019m always reaching into my pocket to check my phone","description":"The prayer nut is an aid to the interior life. It is specifically designed to provoke an inner state.<br \/>\nThere are lots of things that we care about in theory, but forget about in practice. Religions understand this \u2013 and design all sorts of tools (from cathedrals to possibly the smallest of all prompts: the prayer nut) to help us to keep important ideas closer to the front of our minds. Religion can be seen as a gigantic memory-prompting machine that is always trying to get us back on track.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe nut understands our frailties: it doesn\u2019t condemn them, it seeks to respond very creatively to them. The person who made this would have started with the question: how do I get people to remember the truths of the gospels, given how many distractions there are around? And he came up with this beautiful little object, which you can carry in your pocket and keep close to you at all times.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nModern technology is very good at catering for what is urgent, but is very bad at keeping us in touch with what is important. Smartphone providers have something to learn from the prayer nut.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Adam Dirckz","painting_name":"Prayer Nut, 1435","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395956295fig.-55---BK-1981-1.jpg","stub":"im-always-reaching-into-my-pocket-to-check-my-phone","order":70,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395956295fig.-55---BK-1981-1.jpg"},{"id":218,"category_id":5,"name":"For goodness sake, it\u2019s just a cup of tea","description":"It\u2019s one of the surprises of Zen Buddhism that it takes an act that in the West is taken to be an everyday, unremarkable activity and raises it into a ceremony with a solemnity and depth of meaning akin to the Catholic Mass. Every aspect of the tea ceremony, from the patient boiling of the water to the measuring out of the tea leaves, is brought into the big project of reminding us about the importance of friendship and the transient nature of existence. The sensory experience supports and amplifies the philosophical tenets of Zen.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe tea ceremony leaves open the possibility that many actions and daily habits might, with sufficient creative imagination, become similarly elevated and important in our lives. The point isn\u2019t so much that we should take part in tea ceremonies, rather that we should identify certain ideas that might benefit from being made clearer and more tangible through an alliance with certain material and sensuous rituals. There\u2019s a latent sympathy between big ideas about life and the little everyday things, like certain drinks, foods, flowers, scents \u2013 they\u2019re not cut off from the big themes, they can make those themes more alive for us.<br \/>\n","artist_name":"Unknown","painting_name":"Tea Bowl, 1600 - 1699","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1395956883fig.-69---AK-MAK-615.jpg","stub":"for-goodness-sake-its-just-a-cup-of-tea","order":85,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1395956883fig.-69---AK-MAK-615.jpg"},{"id":224,"category_id":5,"name":"I\u2019m more into facts","description":"This intriguing scientific instrument reminds us of something that the Enlightenment kept well in mind but we have rather neglected: that our reasons for liking art and science can be remarkably similar. When this model of the heavens was made, art and science were understood to be cousins, with interest in one leading naturally to the other. The reasons for being interested in science were not so dissimilar to the motives for turning to art: a search for beauty and a taste for a grander order of things that could put our lives into consoling and encouraging context. <br \/>\n<br \/>\nScientific work was not reserved for the laboratory; it could enter daily life and be a talking point over dinner. You didn\u2019t need to understand every last detail to feel that you had the right to join in; you could have an aesthetic relationship with science \u2013 a possibility neglected in our times, but helpfully pointed out by this model of the solar system. <br \/>\nThe object signals that it\u2019s not enough for a scientific theory to be true: complex concepts (in this case the movements of the planets) need to be presented with elegance and charm if they are to live as they should in our imaginations. We need today\u2019s scientists to hang out a little more with artists.","artist_name":"Hartog van Laun","painting_name":"Table orrery","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1400672145NG-NM-11700.jpg","stub":"im-more-into-facts","order":89,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1400672145NG-NM-11700.jpg"},{"id":225,"category_id":5,"name":"Fashion is a trap","description":"Clothes evoke the characters of the people who might wear them. Let\u2019s imagine the kind of woman who might buy a dress like this \u2013 let\u2019s call her Maartje. She\u2019d be:<br \/>\n- very reasonable, but playful<br \/>\n- sexy, yet austere<br \/>\n- proud of herself, without being stand-offish<br \/>\n- not exuberant, but capable of moments of dry wit and the occasional sarcastic judgement (but you\u2019ll have to be careful to catch it)<br \/>\n- pretty, but unconcerned with her looks; confident that she\u2019ll prove interesting enough to those who interest her<br \/>\n<br \/>\nMaartje doesn\u2019t exist, and we do know the original owner of the dress. But for our purposes, the character we\u2019ve discerned in the material and Yves Saint Laurent\u2019s design is real. The dress invites the wearer to become a little like Maartje by slipping it on. Though fashion can seem frivolous, its true task is to help us to identify our optimal personalities. Finding the right fashion for us is a route to becoming slightly better versions of ourselves. Fashion has an honourable psychological purpose and is rightly at home in the nation\u2019s gallery.","artist_name":"Yves Saint Laurent","painting_name":"Mondrian dress","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/14017353261.jpg","stub":"fashion-is-a-trap","order":90,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/14017353261.jpg"},{"id":226,"category_id":5,"name":"Only prestigious objects can tell us important things","description":"This is one of the first things that many visitors to the Netherlands see \u2013 and fortunately, it says something rather eloquent and accurate about the character of the Dutch (while also sending us efficiently in the right direction). Benno Wissing knew how significant every choice of typeface could be. This one carries out the task of embedding quite an abstract quality \u2013 \u2018Dutchness\u2019 \u2013 in something very utilitarian. It shows that a big idea can be anchored in a straightforward, everyday item.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe signage can be a legitimate location for national pride. It\u2019s not an idealization of the Netherlands. It reflects real qualities: unfussy efficiency and a sense of dignified equality. This is Vermeer for today: ultimately the signs point us back to Vermeer\u2019s Little Street. Nowadays, Vermeer wouldn\u2019t just have painted Delft; he might have captured a strange moment of stillness, a hiatus in the air, between the Frankfurt and Jakarta KLM gates. He would have painted Concourse D at Schiphol.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nA country\u2019s identity doesn\u2019t reside only in its grand museums, war memorials and flags. It can also be found in tram benches, street lamps, door handles and, of course, the direction to the toilets or arrivals hall.","artist_name":"Benno Wissing","painting_name":"Signage system for Schiphol Airport","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/14017354132.jpg","stub":"only-prestigious-objects-can-tell-us-important-things","order":91,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/14017354132.jpg"},{"id":230,"category_id":5,"name":"I\u2019m in the wrong job","description":"It is possible some days to deeply regret the line of work you have fallen into. Maybe it was exciting at first; now you are exhausted, going round in circles and adding nothing of value to the world. One longs for the fantasy job: being an astronaut, museum educator, cabinet minister, gourmet farmer - or spy. There's a painful gap between the imagined ideal and the daily reality.<br \/>\n<br \/>\n<i>The Honourable Schoolboy<\/i> takes us into the working life of Jerry Westerby, a British intelligence agent. His job involves exhilarating moments. At one point he as to talk his way into the back offices of bank in Hong Kong and coerce a corrupt manger into opening the safe. He is alone, the fire escape is his only exit; the manager might start screaming or break down in tears, a secretary could put her head in the door any second. Jerry is at his finest: brave, masterful, intensely alert.  <br \/>\n<br \/>\nBut most of Jerry's days are passed lying anxiously in tiny dirty apartments, in cities where no one knows him. He wakes up at night petrified someone might be breaking into his room. There's a frantic burst of action, then a long wait for further instructions, while his bosses are caught up in political deals and infighting. He is endlessly exposed to boredom and a sense of pointlessness. Even if he succeeds in his mission - which is very uncertain - will it really do any good? He is defending British interests, but in bleaker moments he feels he doesn't even like his own country. So what is he doing it for?<br \/>\n<br \/>\n<i>The Honourable Schoolboy<\/i> is an education in pessimism. Jobs which seem exciting from the outside are in reality often very boring. We get seduced by unrealistic portrayals of work, with the dull bits edited out. So we torture ourselves with an unfair comparison: why is my life so tangled, unproductive, unrewarded?<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWe dream about the perfect job, but forget to add in the reality. Astronauts, museum guides and cabinet ministers must sometimes lament their jobs, feel they are useless, want to run away from meetings and wonder why they didn't pick a better career path. But if we distract ourselves with the fantasy that life for some people is always exciting and productive, we miss the real choice. In finding good work we are not looking to avoid all suffering; we are looking to take on the right kinds of suffering, for important goals.","artist_name":"John le Carre","painting_name":"The Honourable Schoolboy","image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/560x1000\/1407786752the-honourable-schoolboy.jpg","stub":"im-in-the-wrong-job","order":95,"category_name":"Free time","large_image":"\/dynamic\/thumbs\/960x960\/1407786752the-honourable-schoolboy.jpg"}]}