This video was inspired by a brilliant tiktok: www.tiktok.com/@anan0tanna/video/7048950728416709935 (I know other people have played Has This Artist Ever Seen a Baby Before, but this particular tiktok was my inspiration!) -John
Well I must have been way ahead of the curve when I visited Avignon nearly 20 years ago. The Palace of the Popes had a 50 picture exhibit featuring Madonna and Child pieces. And yes, many of the babies looked like middle aged men 😆 And of course I asked: have any of these guys ever seen a baby OR a naked woman?
I have seen lots of babies. They come in many flavors: skinny, CHONK, stretchy, fetal, passive, CHAOS, dark, pale, squishy, solid... Let's just say that they have seen a baby, but all babies are unique and need snuggles. #DFTBA going to snuggle my kids every day, even when they are embarrassed by it.
i’d love to see two works by the same artist with baby improvement so as to give the commentary: “you can pinpoint with some accuracy the point at which this artist met a baby”
Omg! My friends and I went to the Louvre in June, and we also played "does this artist even know what a baby looks like?"! It was so fun! We also laughed for like 10 minutes over the statue holding guy
Oddly enough, that guy looks like he should be holding a baby, and in no way looks like he is trying to hold *that* statue, and I think the artist was just like "Imma be real, I do not know how to draw a baby, here's a nekkid lady statue instead...I spent a lotta time doing those in school."
I made myself laugh at the end because i thought you were going to say "the artist had not only seen a baby but was one" as if the answer to all these bad baby paintings was that no artists had ever once been babies they were all Benjamin Buttons
Same, but my prediction was that he was going to say the artist had not only seen a baby, but actually loved one. The contrast between loved and held was enough for me!
It doesn't matter how fairly commonplace it is to see Sarah in videos these days, my brain will always be like "the yeti?!" every time. I hope this never changes.
“i don’t know if this is a good painting but after all this religious iconography and mythology it was just nice to see a 400 year old Michael Cera cradling a statue”
I feel like... that's it. I've seen the Louvre. Got the Mona Lisa in there for approximately the time you'll get to see the Mona Lisa at approximately the size of the Mona Lisa, got a tour of all the VERY interesting babies. Like, what more is there? Boom, case closed. John Green, bringing you to the Louvre OUT OF HIS OWN POCKET.
I often think about how the statues were painted and when people found out, they said they would have looked really gawdy with intense colours and stuff... But the technology probably is just picking up the basecoat and stuff and there would have been so much more detail added on top.
Oh that's a good theory. I want to believe you're right. Otherwise -- how can you carve something so intricate then just slap some blocks of color on it and call it a day?
I recommend looking at the fayum portraits to see just how lifelike some ancient art was! There was the little speculative story I read about a party in ancient rome only lit by candles and oil lamps and being wine drunk when you see a painted statue and mistake it for a serving boy. That idea just haunts me.
They were also gullible enough to believe the new parents who told them that their baby was cuter than any other. Working backwards from below-average is a great way to reach goblin-tier.
I'd like to note, some of these examples appear to fit more into the category of "had never seen a baby above the neck". We all get the reasoning behind the old-man faces, but their heads should still be shaped like human heads, right?
😂I remember having a similar discussion in a Western Literature class, and the resounding question was "did the artists just never leave their studios or have children of their own?" And the resounding conclusion was a class-wide shrug and a "Maybe not."
If people judged me by my baby drawing skills I would not only appear as if I had never seen a baby, but would look as though I had never even had one described to me.
Imagine how bizarre it would look if they painted parts of government buildings in Washington, DC, to "look more accurately" neoclassical. I think we would *all* hate it.
played this exact game at the louvre in May and again at the philadelphia museum of art last friday - the best ones are northern renaissance (Netherlands, Belgium, Germany etc. during late 15th century to the 16th century) because they have not seen babies, birds, or people with emotions
Artemisia Gentileschi has some of the best paintings of babies from her time period because she actually had kids and was the main caretaker, plenty of time for observation.
"He's just seen adults and imagined they were once smaller" is my favorite quote of the week. I realize it's only Tuesday but I'm confident nothing will top this.
Never been to the Louvre but I understand that they should just officially change the name of the Mona Lisa room to "The People-Waiting-to-See-the-Mona-Lisa Room", since that's the real point. Good on you for shrugging it off publicly.
My college art professor told us that if we ever go to the Louvre we should just skip the Mona Lisa and look at a reproduction in the gift shop as we'd get a better look.
Last time I went to the Mona Lisa room it was not to see the Mona Lisa but to see The Wedding at Cana which is across from it.... and it was being restored 😭
I remember hurrying to get ahead of a bunch of teenagers (it was European spring break apparently) and we wanted to get ahead of the to see the winged Victory. Meanwhile they had no interest in the statue. Probably on their way to see the Mona Lisa 😆
It's so strange how THAT painting became so iconic that it needs barriers and darkened glass to protect it from hoards of people who come for a faraway glimpse of it. I mean, it's a nice painting, but there are plenty of other ones in the Louvre alone that are also quite nice. It's also kind of a shame that you can't really get a pleasant, organic viewing experience of that particular nice painting now.
maybe it's more people who had given birth not getting their art into the Louvre? You can be capable of pregnancy and never do it (hopefully that'll be me) or you could be incapable of pregnancy and see babies all the time and draw a million babies in your lifetime, or you could have once been capable of pregnancy, then stopped being capable of it, and then painted a bunch of babies and still not have your art recognised or appreciated
A friend of mine did her PhD on the subject of how to present unknowns to the public in terms of archaeology. Like, we know this was painted, but we don't know how it was painted. Any repainting we might do is a guess (and is interfering with archaeology), but leaving it unpainted presents a false idea to the public. (Though she was focused more on tumble-down German castles.) Basically, she was studying what kind of reconstructions and guides most clearly explain to the public what's known and what's educated guesswork. (We are pretty certain that there was a window here, though we can't be sure, and we have no idea what shape it was.) Fascinating stuff. Her PhD defense was online, and I got to watch it.
Not having a PhD in this, but I think with things that have a "manageable" size like statues, it would make sense to make replicas and paint them as close to what we think it looked like as possible and to display both versions next to each other. This is way harder when it comes to things like castles, though. We can't copy them. Not just because it's super expensive, but also because the mountain they sit on is part of the castles and copying a mountain would be a little bit excessive.
So happy to see you enjoying my city, Sarah and John! Have a great stay in Paris and for the authentic French experience, be sure to get stuck in a crowded metro! Signed, a frustrated Parisian stuck on commute, who's nonetheless grateful the new vlogbrothers vid dropped right now.
If it makes you feel any better, we New Yorkers get stuck on crowded metros all the time too! 🙂 somehow I'd rather be stuck on a Parisian metro... probably because then I would be on holiday in Paris! 😁 ❤️
I’m in the NICU with my newborn baby and feeling very emotionally raw and scared. I watched this video when they took her to run tests in the lab. It’s the first minute I’ve been alone and had any space to myself. I needed a minute to giggle about the homunculus and about weird art. Thanks for being with me tonight. It’s like having a friend to distract me in the room.
This made me laugh so much! I feel like some of those artists not only haven’t seen a baby, but also they’re terrified by what they have heard about the babies they have not seen
as someone who's "never" seen a baby, I would've loved an explanation why some of these where wrong. Some are obvious, but some look like babies to me?
Proportions are off - adult muscles that shouldn't exist - too much teeth in the mouth for the very young - wrong expression and poses in general - adults holding the baby off the center of balance - lack of baby flexibility... there is a lot
Favorite Louvre memory: Getting Vaguely lost on the 3rd level going through relatively tiny room after tiny room until I stumbled upon that Joseph Ducreux painting everyone knows from everywhere and thinking "Well I may be lost, but I'm exactly where I want to be"
I do love some good classical art humor. I knew my husband was the right one for me when we were solemnly touring the classical sculpture exhibit at the Getty Museum in LA and my husband dryly remarked, “raise your hand if you’re a bronze naked lady.” I cracked up when I noticed that pretty much all of the bronze naked lady statues had at least one arm up. 😂
I love getting these videos, which are more slice of life rather than educational, because while I dearly love the educational content, these are very entertaining, and I had to be careful not to giggle in public while viewing it. Which is my favorite kind of Vlogbrothers video, regardless of the subject. :)
1:00 Jacques louis david also succeeded in paintin what is the **only** baby i can say that ive looked at and thowt "Hmm, they look kinda pensive". Pensive is the last word i wud think of to describe a baby, but this paintin captures that feeling entirely and this baby truly looks to be havin some deep and serious thoughts rn.
I also love playing this game!! My current favourite weird baby/cherub are ones decorated on a building in my neighbourhood. They look like they are under immense distress trying to keep the windows from falling off the building. Amazing!
I was also just at the Louvre last week and unfortunately we did not get to enjoy much as there were so many people! What we did see was nice. Wish we had booked a guided tour with Sarah. She would have made it interesting.
My first investment with Mrs Charlotte gave me profit of over $24,000 Us dollars and ever since then she has never failed to deliver and I can even say she's the most sincere broker I have known.
This seems like a fun game for any of the old art museums.. Loved mentioning the animal thing, could play that game too, "Has the artist ever seen the animal it has painted". It seems like that rhinoceros guy was given a brilliant overall description of the body shape but then when it came to the skin he was like uhhhh idk kind of like a fish but kind of like a reptile, but also kind of like leather but overall like an armadillo.
I have this similar game with my best friend caled What is Mary thinking? We send eachother paintings of Mary we come across (we're both catholic so it's not all that dificult;) and the other tries to figure out what Mary is thinking at the moment. There's alot of eye-rolling, to tell the true, so she's mostly bored or anoyed
Paris is such a good time. I was worried I'd get Paris Syndrome when we visited but we ended up walking for around 16 hours across two days trying to see everything. It felt like every centimeter of my leg bones had fractured by the end. We got on a cruise shortly thereafter and just laid on the bed gently touching our legs and hoping it would stop hurting. It took...a while.
The image evoked by "gently touching our legs" was so specific and so precisely what I do after way too much walking. It's a pain that demands to be felt, like maybe provoking the ache a little will heal it faster and you can't just NOT touch the sore muscles while you wait.
Just as Hank walked us through weird zillow houses, I will need more REAL stories from museums. I would pay for this audio walking tour of the Louvre. No shade to the "real" tour guide who walked us through, but this actually kept my attention. Happy to see other variations like "Has this artist ever seen a" dog/horse/human/shoe, etc. Please and thank you.
"I don't know if this is a good painting" - it made you feel something, so it is a very good painting in my book. Thanks for letting us tag along on your visit!
I'll take exception to the idea that Neoclassical architecture isn't neoclassical. If anything it is exceptionally NEO-classical specifically because it ISN'T classical. That's what makes it neo and what makes it unique and enjoyable for entirely different reasons. The exposed marble has always been a testament to how far society has come since the dark ages, to me. When I went to DC for the first time I, several times, made the comment to my partner that it's amazing how much marble and artists to carve it our society was able to produce and/or acquire for a seemingly inconsequential purpose. The fact that it remains unpainted draws attention to the material, not the design, and allows it to serve as a testament to post-capitalism and the world we might one day inhabit.
I was thinking along the same lines and came to the comments to make a similar observation. It's exactly the sterility of the unadorned materials that make it NEOclassical.
I feel like most of these ppl either had really bad first encounters with babies, or just had nightmares about them, and refused to get closer in the future even for research purposes... "Nah, I'm good, I got it, KEEP THAT THING AWAY FROM ME!!!" 😂🤣
I was at the Met Cloisters with my partners on Saturday, and we played this precise game, which has been a favorite of mine for many years! (Spoiler: Very few medieval artists had seen babies, but those who had seen them had REALLY seen them.)
I think about that Neoclassical thing all of the time. Like, in an attempt to emulate this very specific style, a completely different thing ended up being created.
It wasn't until John was describing it that I realized how unsettling the homunculus idea is. Sure, Jesus is the son of god and he must have known what he came to earth to do at some point, but knowing it from the very beginning? Before he could walk or speak or eat solid food? Can you even imagine having full knowledge of all your life's joys and sufferings, not to mention a grand cosmic destiny, all in a brand-new human brain? From the famous Agony in Gethsemane, it's clear that adult Jesus worried about this; having those worries and having learned no human social/behavioral skills to manage them sounds like my worst nightmare.
This video was inspired by a brilliant tiktok: www.tiktok.com/@anan0tanna/video/7048950728416709935 (I know other people have played Has This Artist Ever Seen a Baby Before, but this particular tiktok was my inspiration!) -John
Hi John! Thank you so much for watching and liking my video enough to keep up the “has this artist seen a baby” energy.
I do dig how she rated them. Or perhaps better said, she *reviewed* them on a star scale. :)
@@historiana781 I feel like my life is better for having watched your video now
Well I must have been way ahead of the curve when I visited Avignon nearly 20 years ago. The Palace of the Popes had a 50 picture exhibit featuring Madonna and Child pieces. And yes, many of the babies looked like middle aged men 😆 And of course I asked: have any of these guys ever seen a baby OR a naked woman?
I have seen lots of babies. They come in many flavors: skinny, CHONK, stretchy, fetal, passive, CHAOS, dark, pale, squishy, solid... Let's just say that they have seen a baby, but all babies are unique and need snuggles. #DFTBA going to snuggle my kids every day, even when they are embarrassed by it.
i’d love to see two works by the same artist with baby improvement so as to give the commentary: “you can pinpoint with some accuracy the point at which this artist met a baby”
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😂 you've given me a new thing to look for at museums
wahahahaha +++
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Omg! My friends and I went to the Louvre in June, and we also played "does this artist even know what a baby looks like?"! It was so fun! We also laughed for like 10 minutes over the statue holding guy
I didn't even know that this is a thing people do. 😅🤣🤣🤣
Oddly enough, that guy looks like he should be holding a baby, and in no way looks like he is trying to hold *that* statue, and I think the artist was just like "Imma be real, I do not know how to draw a baby, here's a nekkid lady statue instead...I spent a lotta time doing those in school."
@@politereminder6284 You can do the same with animals! Has this artist ever seen a cat?
@@jama211 Or horses!
@@jama211 that reminds me of that one painting in where artist was like, “I’m sure a cat is just a small dog with human facial feature.”
Thing is, Michael Cera could actually be 400 years old and STILL look just like that
He truly is timeless.
That was *clearly* Millie Bobby Brown
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He also may have accidentally wandered into the 17th century the way he accidentally stars in movies without realizing he's even acting.
I made myself laugh at the end because i thought you were going to say "the artist had not only seen a baby but was one" as if the answer to all these bad baby paintings was that no artists had ever once been babies they were all Benjamin Buttons
Same!!!
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Same, but my prediction was that he was going to say the artist had not only seen a baby, but actually loved one. The contrast between loved and held was enough for me!
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It doesn't matter how fairly commonplace it is to see Sarah in videos these days, my brain will always be like "the yeti?!" every time. I hope this never changes.
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Went straight to the comments to say exactly that :D
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I'll be real. I forgot about the yeti joke, and I am thrilled to be reminded.
Can someone explain this yeti joke
“i don’t know if this is a good painting but after all this religious iconography and mythology it was just nice to see a 400 year old Michael Cera cradling a statue”
He's aged really well!! 💖
@@a_Just_Nichole hi nichole! 🥰
@@dftbarachel HI hunny!! Foundja 😍💖
I loved that part🤣
Do you know what that painting is called?
i'm absolutely loving the most recent "just for fun" videos! reminds me of old school vlogbrothers :)
Giraffe
Is your name a reverse psychology thing or what? Now I really want to check out your channel...
@@RialVestro it's kind of a practical joke where both sides have to participate for it to work
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I feel like... that's it. I've seen the Louvre. Got the Mona Lisa in there for approximately the time you'll get to see the Mona Lisa at approximately the size of the Mona Lisa, got a tour of all the VERY interesting babies. Like, what more is there? Boom, case closed. John Green, bringing you to the Louvre OUT OF HIS OWN POCKET.
Still worth an IRL visit if you ever get the chance! If only for the Jacques Louis David paintings and Liberty Leading the People! -John
Honestly, the Egyptian artrfacts are to die for... I was in there so long they almost locked me in
@@OneRandomLeo Locked in with some ancient, possibly cursed Egyptian artifacts sounds like it would have been interesting.
@@OneRandomLeo The dream for everyone reading The Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler
@@OneRandomLeo But have you been to The British Museum?
I often think about how the statues were painted and when people found out, they said they would have looked really gawdy with intense colours and stuff... But the technology probably is just picking up the basecoat and stuff and there would have been so much more detail added on top.
Maybe but I would 100% believe the Greeks and Roman's were just gaudy AF. Subtlety is not their strongest trait.
Oh that's a good theory. I want to believe you're right. Otherwise -- how can you carve something so intricate then just slap some blocks of color on it and call it a day?
So basically, ancient statues were just giant Warhammer models.
I think the same. If you look at mosaics from the same time, you see subtlety and shading. It's not like they didn't understand color theory
I recommend looking at the fayum portraits to see just how lifelike some ancient art was! There was the little speculative story I read about a party in ancient rome only lit by candles and oil lamps and being wine drunk when you see a painted statue and mistake it for a serving boy. That idea just haunts me.
I think some of these artists have just seen SUPER ugly babies and decided to take that and roll further with it than they should've done.
I love that one where the baby has the exact same side-eye look as the woman holding them
In defense of the artists, perrspective, proportion and foreshortening we're still in their "infancy."
@@jamesclapp6832 I groaned and smiled at this comment. Well played.
They were also gullible enough to believe the new parents who told them that their baby was cuter than any other. Working backwards from below-average is a great way to reach goblin-tier.
Plausible!
I can assure you, very few painters have seen a horse and its the best thing ever
I am glad that John and I both recognize a 400 year old painting of Michael Cera when we see one
Came to the comments to see if this was here already, cuz same
I'd like to note, some of these examples appear to fit more into the category of "had never seen a baby above the neck". We all get the reasoning behind the old-man faces, but their heads should still be shaped like human heads, right?
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😂I remember having a similar discussion in a Western Literature class, and the resounding question was "did the artists just never leave their studios or have children of their own?" And the resounding conclusion was a class-wide shrug and a "Maybe not."
Such an insightful video. Thank you John and Sarah! I am beginning to wonder if any of us have ever truly seen a baby.
As the father of a currently 6 week old, it seems like of late I have seen nothing but baby
its a well known fact that babies go invisible when someone tries to look at them, therefore no one has seen a baby
@@benhansberry But you have to test whether you have actually seen a baby by making a Baroque painting of a baby.
If people judged me by my baby drawing skills I would not only appear as if I had never seen a baby, but would look as though I had never even had one described to me.
Your intrepid spouse has the capabilities of raising the eyebrow dramatically, that is a good ability, keep it up
when the rock is sus
>keep it up
what? the eyebrow? please give her a break. we don't want her to have facial cramp!
Spock levels of dramatic eyebrow arching
Greek statues having once been painted really blew my mind -- what is, is not necessarily, and may not always have been
…much like babies 👶
It really is hard to imagine iconic pieces like the venus de milo in color
You might also be interested to know that many statues that are missing arms actually originally had bronze arms that rusted and fell off over time
Imagine how bizarre it would look if they painted parts of government buildings in Washington, DC, to "look more accurately" neoclassical. I think we would *all* hate it.
Did you maybe mean to write: "what is is not necessarily, and may not always have been, what was."?
played this exact game at the louvre in May and again at the philadelphia museum of art last friday - the best ones are northern renaissance (Netherlands, Belgium, Germany etc. during late 15th century to the 16th century) because they have not seen babies, birds, or people with emotions
Artemisia Gentileschi has some of the best paintings of babies from her time period because she actually had kids and was the main caretaker, plenty of time for observation.
I feel this comment needs more thumbs up, so here's another thumbs-up! 👍
Gentileschi, a rare example of an artist who actually knew what she was painting about.
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There is an anime called Arte loosely based on her life!
As a person with an art degree, this video is EVERYTHING. I now have a new favorite game to play while exploring an art museum.
"He's just seen adults and imagined they were once smaller" is my favorite quote of the week. I realize it's only Tuesday but I'm confident nothing will top this.
Never been to the Louvre but I understand that they should just officially change the name of the Mona Lisa room to "The People-Waiting-to-See-the-Mona-Lisa Room", since that's the real point. Good on you for shrugging it off publicly.
My college art professor told us that if we ever go to the Louvre we should just skip the Mona Lisa and look at a reproduction in the gift shop as we'd get a better look.
Last time I went to the Mona Lisa room it was not to see the Mona Lisa but to see The Wedding at Cana which is across from it.... and it was being restored 😭
"WHERE'S THE BIG MONA LISA HUNG?" -An American, probably
I remember hurrying to get ahead of a bunch of teenagers (it was European spring break apparently) and we wanted to get ahead of the to see the winged Victory. Meanwhile they had no interest in the statue. Probably on their way to see the Mona Lisa 😆
It's so strange how THAT painting became so iconic that it needs barriers and darkened glass to protect it from hoards of people who come for a faraway glimpse of it. I mean, it's a nice painting, but there are plenty of other ones in the Louvre alone that are also quite nice. It's also kind of a shame that you can't really get a pleasant, organic viewing experience of that particular nice painting now.
this is also just a huge reminder of how many people who were capable of pregnancy do not have paintings in the louvre
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maybe it's more people who had given birth not getting their art into the Louvre? You can be capable of pregnancy and never do it (hopefully that'll be me) or you could be incapable of pregnancy and see babies all the time and draw a million babies in your lifetime, or you could have once been capable of pregnancy, then stopped being capable of it, and then painted a bunch of babies and still not have your art recognised or appreciated
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Yes!
A friend of mine did her PhD on the subject of how to present unknowns to the public in terms of archaeology. Like, we know this was painted, but we don't know how it was painted. Any repainting we might do is a guess (and is interfering with archaeology), but leaving it unpainted presents a false idea to the public. (Though she was focused more on tumble-down German castles.)
Basically, she was studying what kind of reconstructions and guides most clearly explain to the public what's known and what's educated guesswork. (We are pretty certain that there was a window here, though we can't be sure, and we have no idea what shape it was.)
Fascinating stuff. Her PhD defense was online, and I got to watch it.
That sounds like incredibly interesting work!
Not having a PhD in this, but I think with things that have a "manageable" size like statues, it would make sense to make replicas and paint them as close to what we think it looked like as possible and to display both versions next to each other.
This is way harder when it comes to things like castles, though. We can't copy them. Not just because it's super expensive, but also because the mountain they sit on is part of the castles and copying a mountain would be a little bit excessive.
@@melonlord1414 One idea is perspex screens you can look through which overlay a sketch on the ruins, or VR technology.
@@flowerheit4512 Here's her TEDx talk: th-cam.com/video/zclubTunwd0/w-d-xo.html.
@@qwertyTRiG Augmented Reality would be cool
Ok I now know what I’m gonna do next time I’m in a museum with someone 😂
Same!!
Definitely a top candidate of things to occupy Nerdfighter Travelers!
this made me laugh out loud many times. thank you, john.
They've never probably seen a woman either, let's be honest
So happy to see you enjoying my city, Sarah and John! Have a great stay in Paris and for the authentic French experience, be sure to get stuck in a crowded metro! Signed, a frustrated Parisian stuck on commute, who's nonetheless grateful the new vlogbrothers vid dropped right now.
If it makes you feel any better, we New Yorkers get stuck on crowded metros all the time too! 🙂 somehow I'd rather be stuck on a Parisian metro... probably because then I would be on holiday in Paris! 😁 ❤️
I’m in the NICU with my newborn baby and feeling very emotionally raw and scared. I watched this video when they took her to run tests in the lab. It’s the first minute I’ve been alone and had any space to myself. I needed a minute to giggle about the homunculus and about weird art. Thanks for being with me tonight. It’s like having a friend to distract me in the room.
I hope you and baby are well and do great :)
This made me laugh so much! I feel like some of those artists not only haven’t seen a baby, but also they’re terrified by what they have heard about the babies they have not seen
This is so funny haha
A super rare sighting of the Yeti? French the Llama!!!
This video made me laugh out loud more than once. John, you are a frickin DELIGHT.
the last picture gives me pure bliss
oh this is gonna be good
Some babies look like babies the way Lacroix tastes like fruit.
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Oh my goodness yeeees. My wife and I love to play this game with medieval painters. 😂 Also tons of fun is, “has this person ever seen a cat?”
I really wish I could comment with a picture of a cat I took at the Rijksmuseum 2 weeks ago
as someone who's "never" seen a baby, I would've loved an explanation why some of these where wrong. Some are obvious, but some look like babies to me?
Proportions are off - adult muscles that shouldn't exist - too much teeth in the mouth for the very young - wrong expression and poses in general - adults holding the baby off the center of balance - lack of baby flexibility... there is a lot
Indeed that's why when i saw photoshopped magazines I often thought this person has never seen a person.
Favorite Louvre memory: Getting Vaguely lost on the 3rd level going through relatively tiny room after tiny room until I stumbled upon that Joseph Ducreux painting everyone knows from everywhere and thinking "Well I may be lost, but I'm exactly where I want to be"
absolute gold!
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If there's anywhere you could get lost, I think The Louvre isn't a bad option.
The amount of joy I had when John said Michael Cera because I was really hoping I wasn’t the ONLY one.
I do love some good classical art humor. I knew my husband was the right one for me when we were solemnly touring the classical sculpture exhibit at the Getty Museum in LA and my husband dryly remarked, “raise your hand if you’re a bronze naked lady.” I cracked up when I noticed that pretty much all of the bronze naked lady statues had at least one arm up. 😂
I love getting these videos, which are more slice of life rather than educational, because while I dearly love the educational content, these are very entertaining, and I had to be careful not to giggle in public while viewing it. Which is my favorite kind of Vlogbrothers video, regardless of the subject. :)
"400 year old Michael Cera" made me chuckle.
2:57 basically how every mother sees their son/s
My husband and I couldn’t stop laughing. Great way to start the morning! Thank you for this
1:00 Jacques louis david also succeeded in paintin what is the **only** baby i can say that ive looked at and thowt "Hmm, they look kinda pensive".
Pensive is the last word i wud think of to describe a baby, but this paintin captures that feeling entirely and this baby truly looks to be havin some deep and serious thoughts rn.
I also love playing this game!! My current favourite weird baby/cherub are ones decorated on a building in my neighbourhood. They look like they are under immense distress trying to keep the windows from falling off the building. Amazing!
take a shot every time john says 'baby'
Exactly the vintage Vlogbrothers vibe we need in this, the trashfire year of our Lord 2022
I was also just at the Louvre last week and unfortunately we did not get to enjoy much as there were so many people! What we did see was nice. Wish we had booked a guided tour with Sarah. She would have made it interesting.
*Mrs Charlotte is legit and her method works like magic I keep on earning every single week with her new strategies *
I think I'm blessed because if not I wouldn't have met someone who is as spectacular as expert Mrs Charlotte
I think she is the best broker I ever seen
My first investment with Mrs Charlotte gave me profit of over $24,000 Us dollars and ever since then she has never failed to deliver and I can even say she's the most sincere broker I have known.
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@Dana Hope thanks for the recommendation
This seems like a fun game for any of the old art museums.. Loved mentioning the animal thing, could play that game too, "Has the artist ever seen the animal it has painted". It seems like that rhinoceros guy was given a brilliant overall description of the body shape but then when it came to the skin he was like uhhhh idk kind of like a fish but kind of like a reptile, but also kind of like leather but overall like an armadillo.
The description he was given said it had armored skin, so he drew literal armor. What else can you do?
So many gems. Loved the context clues.
Hope you enjoyed the Louvre!!
Might be one of my favourite VLOG Brothers!
Based on my drawing skills, I have never seen a baby
I can't explain why I loved this video as much as I did... But this has to be saved for future revisits immediately!
I have this similar game with my best friend caled What is Mary thinking?
We send eachother paintings of Mary we come across (we're both catholic so it's not all that dificult;) and the other tries to figure out what Mary is thinking at the moment. There's alot of eye-rolling, to tell the true, so she's mostly bored or anoyed
1:18: I feel like after watching these few seconds - on my phone - that I have seen the Mona Lisa enough to be satisfied.
As an artist and an admittedly poor art history student, this is my favorite video on the internet.
Paris is such a good time. I was worried I'd get Paris Syndrome when we visited but we ended up walking for around 16 hours across two days trying to see everything. It felt like every centimeter of my leg bones had fractured by the end.
We got on a cruise shortly thereafter and just laid on the bed gently touching our legs and hoping it would stop hurting. It took...a while.
The image evoked by "gently touching our legs" was so specific and so precisely what I do after way too much walking. It's a pain that demands to be felt, like maybe provoking the ache a little will heal it faster and you can't just NOT touch the sore muscles while you wait.
The artist HAS seen a baby but the baby cried all night so they painted their revenge.
Just as Hank walked us through weird zillow houses, I will need more REAL stories from museums. I would pay for this audio walking tour of the Louvre. No shade to the "real" tour guide who walked us through, but this actually kept my attention. Happy to see other variations like "Has this artist ever seen a" dog/horse/human/shoe, etc. Please and thank you.
I just came to say, that this was a very welcome sprinkling of silliness
I laughed so hard. I am embarrassing myself at work with my stifled laughter and tears.
This is a truly exceptional piece of art analysis
"he's just seen adults and imagined they were once much smaller"
This one one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. Thank you.
Was Michael Cera ever a baby or did he descend from heaven (or ascend from hell) 400 years ago as an eternal adolescent? Someone should check.
Many artists have looked at babies but how many of them have truly seen them
"I don't know if this is a good painting" - it made you feel something, so it is a very good painting in my book. Thanks for letting us tag along on your visit!
This video brought me so much joy. And a little bit of terror.
1:33 he’s ready to be folded into the King Cake
This was a good vlogbrothers video. This is why I'm still here after all this time.
I'll take exception to the idea that Neoclassical architecture isn't neoclassical. If anything it is exceptionally NEO-classical specifically because it ISN'T classical. That's what makes it neo and what makes it unique and enjoyable for entirely different reasons. The exposed marble has always been a testament to how far society has come since the dark ages, to me. When I went to DC for the first time I, several times, made the comment to my partner that it's amazing how much marble and artists to carve it our society was able to produce and/or acquire for a seemingly inconsequential purpose. The fact that it remains unpainted draws attention to the material, not the design, and allows it to serve as a testament to post-capitalism and the world we might one day inhabit.
I was thinking along the same lines and came to the comments to make a similar observation. It's exactly the sterility of the unadorned materials that make it NEOclassical.
One of my new favorite vlog brother episodes!
I don’t know why, but the expression on the face of the guy holding the statue is very relatable 😂
John the art critic, providing some of the sickest burns in history
I feel like most of these ppl either had really bad first encounters with babies, or just had nightmares about them, and refused to get closer in the future even for research purposes... "Nah, I'm good, I got it, KEEP THAT THING AWAY FROM ME!!!" 😂🤣
One of my faves! A very fun episode!
I was at the Met Cloisters with my partners on Saturday, and we played this precise game, which has been a favorite of mine for many years! (Spoiler: Very few medieval artists had seen babies, but those who had seen them had REALLY seen them.)
3:52 was totally expecting you to say "and may have even been a baby"
John, this is probably one of my favorite videos you've made. Very fun and creative.
Clearly Michael Cera got sent back in time for that painting due to his caressing that tiny weeping angel
I see from your pinned comment that others have done this but this is my first exposure to the idea and WOW I LOVE IT.
Everybody is always taking about how much smaller the Mona Lisa is than you expect that it was actually bigger than I anticipated.
We used to play this is my college Art History class!
That's hilarious
My wife and I enjoyed this after experiencing the Uffizi and going on our own journey of deciphering the minds of artists from another time
“Babies are just tiny drunk adults” -all these artists
tbh children were viewed as immoral, irrational, ill-tempered adults and not objects of parental adoration until the mid to late 1800s.
This will go down as a classic
I think about that Neoclassical thing all of the time. Like, in an attempt to emulate this very specific style, a completely different thing ended up being created.
I will never see art the same. I love this lens for analyzing art.
Thank you for making what is now one of my favourite video on the internet. This has brought me such joy!
This feels like a flashback to old-school vlogbrothers :)
"...and has seen a baby more recently than he has seen a human woman" 🤣🤣🤣
I can't watch this without thinking about the baby-adult Colin Robinson monstrosity
It wasn't until John was describing it that I realized how unsettling the homunculus idea is. Sure, Jesus is the son of god and he must have known what he came to earth to do at some point, but knowing it from the very beginning? Before he could walk or speak or eat solid food? Can you even imagine having full knowledge of all your life's joys and sufferings, not to mention a grand cosmic destiny, all in a brand-new human brain? From the famous Agony in Gethsemane, it's clear that adult Jesus worried about this; having those worries and having learned no human social/behavioral skills to manage them sounds like my worst nightmare.
Frankly, most things about Catholic doctrine disturb the heck out of me.
"I'm the baby!" - Baby Sinclair, Dinosaurs.
You found the perfect painting to end the video! ♥️
Well, this was a delightfully fun video. Thanks John!
This is the kind of vid that made me fall in love with Vlogbrothers. Instant classic