- Hi, I am Ken Burns for our series of Unum Chats focused on Leonardo da Vinci.

I'm excited to speak with Tavaris drawn, a celebrated artist working at the intersection of art history, science, and cultural critique.

His work has garnered numerous accolades, including the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the LACMA Art and Technology Lab Artist Grant, and the Tiffany Foundation grant.

He has participated in the Alice b Kimble Fellowship, the Grand Arts Residency Fellowship, and was the inaugural Allen Institute artist in residence in 2013.

He represented The Bahamas at the 55th Venice Biennale.

Very much in the spirit of this film, many of Ava's works ask us to reconsider our received knowledge of the world.

Welcome to Varas, to our Unum Chat.

- It's an absolute pleasure to be here.

- So we're gonna start by watching a short clip from our upcoming film on Leonardo da Vinci.

This clip is from the second episode of a two-part film, examining Leonardo's philosophy towards art.

In his writing a treatise on painting, the first voice you'll hear is an actor Adriano Giannini, reading from Leonardo's manuscripts.

So let's play the clip.

- If the painter wishes to see enchanting beauties, he has the power to create them.

If he wants to see frightful mastro or things that are funny, ridiculous, or truly heartrending, he's the Lord and master.

In fact, anything that exists in the universe, in essence, presence or imagination, he has first in his mind, then in his hands.

And they are so excellent that they can generate a well proportioned harmony in the same time as a single glance, as real things do.

- He's always in the treaties on painting using you.

He the, the address, he is you, the second person address, which I really, really like, but I sometimes feel like he's talking to himself the way we talk to ourselves.

Like, you've gotta get this right.

So it seems like a conversation with himself in which he's trying to work it out a little bit.

So for instance, when he wants to talk about how shadows don't all have the same color, he says, if you see a woman in a meadow dressed in white, that part of the woman that is turned toward the sun will be white in a way that reflects the sun's rays.

That part of her that is next to the meadow will reflect the meadow.

It's so beautiful.

- One of the things he always emphasized was, look at form in the world and try and see not what you expect to see.

Face a shoulder a, a torso, but see what's there.

So Leonardo was acutely aware of the possibility of that kind of imaginative projection into places where no one would look for representational form.

- When you look at the wall spotted with stains or with a mixture of stones, if you have to devise some scene, you might notice a resemblance to various landscapes, adrn with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, planes, wide valleys and hills, variously arranged.

Or again, you may see battles and figures in action, or strange faces and costumes and an endless variety of objects, which you could reduce to complete and well drawn forms.

- Four centuries later, the German artist, max Ernst, would recall that Leonardo's advice to seek familiar forms in unexpected places, walls, stains, clouds, had provoked an unbearable visual obsession and left him staring endlessly at floorboards.

- Leonardo was more than any single artist, the one who emancipated painters, visual artists from their role essentially as glorified artisans, craftsmen into the role that they occupy to this day.

As Sears and philosophers and sort of princes of the mind from very early on, people recognized that Leonardo was another class of creature.

They saw that he had gifts that were discontinuous with other people's gifts.

So in Leonardo's, self imagining and self fashioning was as a poet, a philosopher, someone who transcended the artisanal, and in very real ways.

He was the very first artist, certainly in western history to play that role.

- So let's just start.

What, what's your reaction to VARs?

I'd like to start with what you thought about that, that clip you saw, or the film, if you've had a chance to watch the whole thing.

- I have, I have.

I think there's so many thoughts that come to my mind, but I think the main one is when you look at this research on Leonardo's work, I think the one thing that stands out to me is a shared consciousness of artistic development over time.

And I think that's deeply connected to one's definition of what it means to be an artist or what art is.

And for me, I think that definition simply, it is a kind of language that can only be used to describe very speci specific and particular parts of the human experience.

And I think from the time of Leonardo to now, I think we get a good sense of artists using very particular language forms that only can be used to say very particular things.

- You know, in the clip Adam Gonick notes that Leonardo changed the perception of visual artists from glorified artisans, craftsmen into the role they occupy to this day.

He said, as Sears and philosophers and sort of, I love this princes of the mind.

Do you see the implications of this in your own work today as you create art?

And in terms of the position of artists in our society to have transcended as Leonardo certainly did in the late 15th and early 16th century?

- Yeah.

I mean, Ken, if we could even go back a little bit further, we, we think about when human beings evolved 250,000 years ago, you know, after you've had, you know, fire in the cave and you figured out water and shelter, then there was this human desire to make something that was reflective of the depth of the human experience.

And those cave painters back then were in the same lineage of shared consciousness as Leonardo in the sense that once Maslow's hierarchy of needs were, were filled, once they were completed, the question was, well, what does it mean to be human?

- Yes.

- And I think the depth of those of, of that particular question is a fundamental premise of, of all of the work of Leonardo.

- Yeah, I agree.

And it's a, i i, I think that developing consciousness is an interesting thing.

You know, none of us get out of here alive, and once those basic needs are provided, then you begin to ask the fundamental questions of who am I?

Where did I come from?

Where am I going to, what is my purpose?

All of those things.

And I think the artists become the medium is a, is a funny word, but just the, the, the interlocutors of, of that kind of transformation or our ability to ask the deeper questions.

The thing I'm, I'm, I'm drawn about, about Leonardo is that he defied modern categories of artistic disciplines as you do.

He was a designer, an architect, an engineer, a painter, a scientist, a sculptor, and so much war.

He was all and none of those things.

At the same time, your work has similarly defied artistic categories, which must frustrate the, the, the convenience and commerce that dominates so much of our lives, including the art scene.

What similarities do you see between Leonardo and how do you think about and approach your work across various disciplines, or do those meaningless borders evaporate?

- I think the thing that connects us, the connective tissue, if you will, is the notion of transgression.

I think societies in general, they don't create neatly defined categories for artists and nor can they, right?

So you're dealing with a, a group of individuals who are constantly defining their, their state of belonging, if you will.

You're dealing with a group of individuals who are thinking through place and space.

And I think a huge piece of that is has to do with transgression.

You know, you're, you're, you're, you're navigating a system that's not necessarily designed to keep you around to some degree, and you're using your wits to be able to, you know, for example, from the medici, get large pieces of marble and employ your staff and your team, and you're, you're, you're learning very deeply how to transgress and negotiate these complex systems that are not necessarily designed to keep you where you are.

Right.

And I think that, I think that that issue of transgression is a, a very serious part of, of, of Leonardo's practice at the time.

- I, I, I think that's a wonderful insight and, and I hadn't really sort of focused on it other than the fact that it, you know, he comes with a certain sort of deficits, if you will, or, or, or, or, or commonplace deficits of being born out of wedlock that doesn't permit him to go to university, which he celebrates.

And he's also a gay man in a world that is periodically intolerant of that.

And it's so interesting that when he's arrested with some other young men and get off, because one of the young men is a, is a wealthy, the son of a wealthy merchant, one of the first things he designs is how to pry bars from a window.

And a transgressive is, is actually becomes, as it is so much in your work, an agency of growth and transformation and communication and, and transcendence.

- I think the other thing too is negotiating, you know, your sexuality within a very constricted religious environment and having a certain, a kind of, you know, sensuality to the, to the, to the male form that is very provocative if you're thinking through it.

And the, the way, the sophistication by which he negotiates some of those relationships between, for example, the church and his own sexuality, and then the work itself is quite complex and super interesting.

Yeah.

And I think, and I think it, it is in a way, it is in a way connected to how a lot of my contemporaries think about transgression.

- Well, that, you know, then I have to sort of get to your own last supper, your recent re-imagining of Leonardo's at the Royal Academy in London.

I read that this exhibition placed historic art at the museum in conversation with contemporary art.

So I'd love to know why you chose this image as your inspiration.

How did you select the figures in including your own portrayal of as Judas, which is just spectacular?

- Thank you.

This, this work was on the heels of a, of a, of a previous work that was called the Encyclopedia of Invisibility, where I made my own encyclopedia based on things that have been more or less left out or excluded from history.

And I had grown up with an image, a copy of, of Leonardo's work in my grandmother's house.

And it always struck me as, as a prompt for a series of questions.

And I think that's always been the hallmark of, of quality works of art for me, was that it, it left you with so many questions.

And so for me, the fir my version of the First First Supper, or the Last Supper, which I call the First Supper, is an amalgamation of a set of prompts about the human experience.

You know, I'm thinking a lot about, you know, the church's African origins.

I'm thinking a lot about the transatlantic journey for a lot of folks.

I'm thinking a lot about visibility and invisibility and belonging, and who gets to sit at the table and who doesn't.

And then I think the question surrounding myself being portrayed as Judas is in no dur Rembrandt, but it's also this question of within the confines of, of black histories having to do with storytelling.

For example, during the times of Jim Crow or during the times of slavery, if you were going to talk about what was going on in your community, it came at a certain weight and it had this weight of, well, are you betraying your community by telling the stories of in your community?

And you know, the connection to the soul, the idea that, that you have to retain the soul and sharing certain secrets about your ancestry was a part of revealing too much about the soul.

And so, you know, making something like the encyclopedic visibility or making something like the First Supper was in a way counter or counter logical to what the traditions in my community has been, which is basically to not, to not tell the world about the inner workings of our community.

Right?

- Yeah.

- And so I think the Judas character is a kind of, and I also think in a way, the, the, the, the original Judas character from the Judeo Bible is a complex character.

- Right.

- Mostly because from the beginning of time he was birthed for this betrayal, which, and, and, and, you know, essentially Jesus can't necessarily save the world without Judas, you know, setting him up.

Yeah.

- They're, it's, yeah.

All, they're all part of the same design.

- Yeah.

Yes, exactly.

- It, it's beautiful.

And this encyclopedia of invisibility, you know, in our own work as we try to tell stories, you know, you're confronted with the momentum and the massiveness of the received wisdom about things.

And then you have to not just dismantle it, but, but say, and yes and yes, Leonardo in his unfinished, unbelievable experimental work, the Adoration of the Magi, he places himself, he has a luxury of places himself in the lower right hand corner as a kind of disinterested nons observant.

He's looking away from the action, which speaks volumes just as your placing yourself as a as, as Judas reflects the own dynamics of your cultural heritage, of the stories that you need to tell, of the sense of keeping this to ourselves and, and, and things remain invisible.

It, it, I I think it's a remarkable act of courage, frankly.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

I think I, I think it's, it's, it's a complicated thing to speak about.

I mean, I think, you know, if you, if you, like for example, within the black community, there is this very intentional clarity surrounding how you talk to the public about the inner workings of that particular community.

And as a, as a, as an example, there are recipes in my family, for example, that my grandmother would have a hard time giving me because she's worried about someone stealing the recipe.

Right?

And that, what that means is as you protect the recipe, it doesn't als it also not, not, not only is it not shared with the public, but it's not even shared within the community.

So some of the stories end up dying.

- Yes.

- And I think the duality of that is something that I'm interested in.

- It's, it's beautiful.

It's, it's so wonderful and it, and I've just, in preparation for our conversation, I've, I've just sort of been lit on fire.

By that I mean, the questions of race and the untold stories in the American experience have been central to everything that I've done.

And so you've added a, a new dimension, not just a middle passage, obviously the experiences, but also some of the, the, the losses that come from the tight knee keeping everything so closely held.

You know, so much of Leonardo's artwork is rooted in his experimentations and observations and curiosity in science in the national world.

He gets the observational thing from the Western tradition, the Aristotelian questions, but he's also getting the experimental things from a Muslim world that the, and, and, and eastern world, that the Renaissance through trade connections is helping to, to foster.

And so he seems to be the person who is bridging all of these complexities.

I know a similar curiosity about, about science and the natural world motivates your work.

You've trained as a cosmonaut, which you know, is just, I haven't met a cosmonaut, I've heard of Yuri Garrin, but I can't name any other co cosmonaut except you and have collaborated with MIT What is the value of an artist thinking like a scientist and vice versa?

Or maybe that doesn't matter.

I mean, I always look at the Mona Lisa and I go, man, that's a great work of science.

One of the early rizer about it, just talking about her face and then drops down to her neck and says, I can see the blood pulsing.

I can see the veins.

I, I, I understand the anatomy and his works of anatomy, his beautiful drawings, embryonic or heart chambers or skeletal or cranial, whatever it might be, are themselves works of arts.

So I, I'm, I'm not sure whether language here - Yeah.

- Is anything but an impediment to whatever that thing is that you and I have to say, he are after this sort of release in which the one-on-one of things becomes three.

And we are wondering what this mystery, what this question is, the universality of these questions.

- Yeah.

I think my definition of, of science, that is a kind of pre-European definition of science, which is simple, which is an observation of the natural world.

I think if, if we're saying that he's doing that, then I think that's, he we're spot on.

And I think, but I think what's, what I think is, is a part of peeling back the layers of the onion, if you will, has to do with the fact that artists have always been interested in power, right?

Yes.

And science as a, as a kind of genre, a sub genre is an institution of power like any other archetypal institution.

And I, and I can, I can see Leonardo throughout his entire career playing around with institutions of power.

So whether it is science or engineering, whether it is the power of architecture, whether it is money like the Medici, whether it is the church.

I think he's constantly negotiating and navigating systems of power.

And there's a little bit of a sleigh of hand, and some of it is tongue in cheek, but it's all in there.

And I think the idea that, you know, social criticism and social critique is a kind of new introduction to, to art.

No, I think we, we've, we've, we've gotten that we, we, if we think that we've gotten it wrong, I think Leonardo was at the apex of social critique.

And I think his, his thoughts about scientific process was an extension of this act of social criticism.

- I, I think that's a wonderful way to understand it.

And there are a multitude of, of, of sort of power dynamics surrounding him, which you listed.

And I think the thing that he kept in his back pocket was this, this simplicity.

He wasn't going to descend into specialism the way we get lost in science or engineering or all these things.

And he's got nature, he's got the perfection of nature, which is his first teacher.

And this simple elemental without a telescope, without a microscope, observational things that is animating, you know, and also just the discipline of his life.

He's writing backwards in a mirror script because he is a lefty.

And, and you can imagine that even when you're writing a laundry, a, a, a laundry list or a grocery store list, he's writing it backwards.

There's some incredible force discipline, which I love that makes him so, so modern, 500 years after his death.

- I think there's always a search for place when you're an artist.

And I think any artist that is multidisciplinary to me is a fundamentally sound artist.

Mostly because you are, you are not relegating yourself to craft, right.

You're, you're relegating yourself to a set of ideas by which craft can be an extension or an opportunity to extend those ideas into the world.

- Yeah.

Well, AVAs, thank you so much for joining us today.

I see you as a seer and a philosopher and a prince of the mind as well, joining some pretty illustrate deservedly joining some very illustrious company.

And so thank you so much for illuminating this in a way that I don't think any of us have, have quite grasped despite our years of study of Leonardo.

And, and your perspective is invaluable.

And we're grateful for your conversation with us today.

- Thank you so much.

I can't wait to see the, the fruit of this labor.

- Thank you.