Dr. Peter Weller
speaker
668 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Dr. Peter Weller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
You do a semester in Syracuse, then you go and you do a year in Florence. And you've got to teach, you've got to be a TA, you've got to be in front of the art, you've got to write, you've got to do calligraphy, you've got to study the documents, and you've got to do German, English, Italian, because essentially we've got to remember one of the great anomalies about Renaissance art is
It's Catholic art. It's Catholic. And indeed, there's some Old Testament or Tanakh, which is the Jewish Bible iconography. But it's essentially Catholic art. The people who revive it, because it's considered naive in the 20th century. This is the reason why I didn't want to go back to it.
Because in the 20th century, you got Cezanne and edging, and you got Cubism, and you got Juan Gris, and you got these guys who are like flying, Klimpton, flying off the wall, right? So this Catholic...
biblical art is naive stuff so the people that reinvented the people go back to the docks and start go wow this is the first time everybody took documents of this thing talking about weird history are jews the great jewish scholars of the turn of the century in the cafe society centers intellectual centers of the world i'm talking about you know warsaw i'm talking about prague i'm talking about uh uh
krakow vienna budapest where berlin this is the explosion of intelligence coming you know this is uh and so and then of course you know the weimar republic falls and the and fascism takes over and everybody runs but these scholars i'm talking about i'm not talking about one or two i'm talking it doesn't matter whether it's uh Panofsky, Steinberg, Witkover, Krautheimer, on and on they go.
And they go to England and they go to NYU as a large Jewish endowment. But those are the scholars that resurrect Renaissance art.
And somebody's going to do a dissertation on that, you know, that the salvation of – and there's a whole lot of, like, gentrified Christians out there going, that's not true. Yes, it is true.
The Jewish intelligentsia academia of the post-World War I scene, or actually pre-World War I scene, with Berenson and Duveen, who was the very first Dutch Jews, the first people who got the United States into collecting art, this is who gave us the Renaissance back, these people. So it's one of the great anomalies, incredible sort of sophisticated people weird pieces of history ever.
And so the Renaissance is like, I'm jumping on this, man. I said, man, I got to learn this stuff. I got to learn this stuff. And so Radke takes me 10 weeks through this. And I said, look at these Jewish historians. Look at what Panofsky says about this. And look what this guy says about, you got to read German. You got to read this stuff.
He says, you know, you qualify for this very special program at Syracuse. where you do this entire master's degree, basically, in Italy. And I said, oh, great. I'll go over there. I'll do that. There was a strike in SAG after. Everybody's having a strike. I said, I'll go over there, man. You know what I'll do, man? I'll walk around. I'll dig some art. I'll learn some stuff.
And then I'll go down to my house in Positano and groove. No. They'll get there and say, you have had no undergrad credits. You've got to audit these classes from 7 o'clock to noon. Then you've got to take this calligraphy, paleography, la, la, la, la, la, la.
Yeah. Yeah. Hey, catch up, man. I was three weeks into this thing. My now wife and my mother come over to visit. I said, I'm out of here, man. This is too much shit. I'm an eight guy. I own a Ferrari. What the fuck am I doing this for, man? Oh, I'm walking to school. I'm listening to academics drone on. I have to take a fresco class. One of the greatest restorers in the world.
I have to learn how to do fresco. I don't want to learn that. I have to learn how to do egg tempura. I don't want to learn that. I have to stand on scaffolds and look at paint restoration. What the hell is this shit? Okay. My mother yells at me again. She's like, you don't quit nothing. We're standing on the Pont de Vecchio. She says, you don't quit nothing. You never quit. The Wellers don't quit.
This is tenacity, baby. You stay. So it's funny. I'm 51 years old. Listen to a 79-year-old mom. Amazing. Yeah.
Yeah. My mom kept me grounded. Listen, my mom said to me, I hadn't seen her in two years. She comes to Venice, joins us in Venice, and walks off a plane. I didn't see her. I say, Mom! She goes, what's with your hair? Yeah. That's 55. Can't you get a haircut? You got the money? That's a mom, man. Moms never end being a mom. That is so true. Your daughters will be, you know, 28.
You'll be going, really? Come on. You got to really cut that necklace. It's horrible. So that's what I did. I stayed with it. I stayed with it. And then I found my jam, which is essentially violent images of Franciscanism. St. Francis was the first person to reinvent. Also, Joto. is a big Franciscan artist. And Francis, St. Francis, I'll tell you the side story of history for weirdos.
The idea of Christ, right, in the Middle Ages, was one of a savior who was a godhead, savior of the world, or going to live forever. And the images of Christ on a cross, which come to us from Greece, essentially, are what we call... It's images of Christ living. The Franciscans, because St. Francis is never a priest, but he preaches.
He's a tent revivalist, and he realized a rich boy in short order. In 1219, there's a war going on with Perugia, and he says, these people ain't got that. 1209, actually. These people are lost, man. All they're hearing is Christ is going to win, and we ain't. And somebody got to teach him this human story of Jesus. And that's what he does. He walks around talking about the human story of Jesus.
The walk of suffering and understanding everybody else is suffering in hell. But look, man, it's like a Zen dude, man. And he's never a priest, never does a mass, never whatever. But within a short amount of time, he's got a lot of people following. I follow the guy. If I'm hearing bullshit from a pulpit going, you're shamed and you're blamed and you're going to go to hell.
And that guy walks along and says, you know what? You don't have to listen to that, man. Just be kind to the guy in front of you. Help the people. Brother, son, sister, moon. Treat earth like it's heaven. He's the saint of peace. He's the saint of ecosystems, man.
Showing 121–140 of 668 · page 7 of 34
← Previous
Next →