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(woman) Two of my favorite painting is John Everett Millais' "Ophelia," a Pre-Raphaelite painting.

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(man) What do you mean by Pre-Raphaelite?

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(woman) Well the Pre-Raphaelites were a group of artists in the 1850s in England,

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actually they formed a group in 1848

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and their goal was to challenge the official ideas of art and what it should be.

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(man) Raphael was a Renaissance artist who really made things

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exact and very technical

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(woman) Raphael was a Renaissance artist who was revered

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in the Victorian era. But by then they were so used

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to looking at Raphael and painting like Raphael

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they so admired him that it had become a kind of formula for painting.

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The Pre-Raphaelites said, "We want to go back to look at the art before Raphael because we have descended

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into a formula and we've lost our real connection

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to looking and observing the world.

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So they painted directly from looking closely at nature.

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They really fit with these ideas that we've been talking about

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of how we value art that challenges the establishment.

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(man) And I definitely appreciate that. What this piece does it still is aesthetically beautiful in a traditional sense

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and you also look at it and say, well there is definitely skill there

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I can't just show up at a canvas and produce something like that.

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(woman) Yeah, the painting is incredibly absorbing. In person it is

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astoundingly beautiful. The colors are rich and deep,

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you can look at how the artist painted every flower, every blade of grass, every reed.

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So that idea of technical skill

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(man) I think even the choice of subject is very beautiful.

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(woman) Yeah the subject and the way it's painted are both beautiful

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and the way it's painted shows great technical skill.

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(man) So for this one I get it on a bunch of different levels.

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It challenged people, it was kind of a pivotal piece of art, and

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it is beautiful and technically sophisticated.

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What are we looking at on the right-hand side?

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(woman) Barnett Newman's "Vir Heroicus Sublimis"

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(man) This is kind of the classic when people look at it and they say

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"Well, that looks nice, it might look nice above my sofa,"

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but there's a big difference here where most people would

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look at the left-hand side and say "Gee, that is pivotal, challenging, and very technically beautiful,"

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while on the right-hand side they say, "Oh, I could do that."

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In fact you see on these home improvement shows, people say we need some artwork and literally they produce

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something that looks not too different than that in a little amount of time.

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(woman) Absolutley. So it's not about technical skill at all.

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But for me, what the Newman asks me to do is something that I really value in my experience of art.

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What it does is it concentrates my attention.

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First of all, it's really big. So when you're in its space, you feel really overcome by it.

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You feel it kind of calling out to you so you are kind of drawn to it and you walk up close

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and it almost starts to become your world.

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The color is really intense.

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What happens to me when I'm in the presence of the painting is that I start to notice the color

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and its effect on me and the way that colors remind me of feelings.

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(man) I guess the cynical, and there are people who look at that and say

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"I can appreciate that, it's a big aesthetic, red thing with some lines in it.

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But someone else could have done it or someone can do it now."

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So that's not why -- what you just described, you are appreciating the aesthetics of it and it is this huge paiting and I can see that,

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but it's more that he was the first to kind of

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(woman) it actually is a lot more complicated than it looks. So it draws us into it.

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Then when we start looking at the lines, we notice that they go from the top to the bottom, that he created the lines

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in different ways, that they have different qualities.

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These are hard things to tell when we're looking at the reproduction.

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It draws us in and I find myself paying attention in a way that I don't normally in my everyday world.

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I really appreciate that for that moment in the museum,

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I'm taken out of my everyday world of being distracted and surrounded by a million different things that I hardly notice

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and I'm being asked to really visually focus.

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(man) I actually appreciate it in a similar way, I've actually never visted

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it in person but I can somewhat imagine on a larger

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scale, especially if you go up close and you see the detail there.

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But there does seem to be a fundamental division between what ..

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I mean they're both aesthetically captivating and interesting.

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The painting on the left, I think you go cross-culture really almost anytime in history,

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and you would have gotten some appreciation for it.

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While the painting on the right, they also would say

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"well that's an interesting way to paint a wall," or something but

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they wouldn't put them in the same category. Is that fair to say?

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(second man) I think that what you're saying is fair. There is a real rupture here.

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The image on the left is still very much a part of history of art making that has to do with representation and depiction.

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I think that what we're looking at on the right it is a fundamental break.

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The painting on the left was a fundamental break in its own day, this Pre-Raphaelite idea.

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(man) It was more of a break in style though, not really hitting "what is art?"

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(second man) That's right. It is pure abstraction. Barnett Newman was an abstract expressionist.

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He belonged to a group of artists that were thinking about painting in very different ways.

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They were asking whether or not art had to be something other than what it was.

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In other words, if you look at "Ophelia," you see this woman who is drowning, who is submerged in this stream

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and it is beautiful. But in a sense, it's a lie.

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This is color paste on canvas that is trying to represent something that it's not.

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It's a falsehood, it's an illusion.

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The image on the right is saying,

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"Can we be true to the materiality of our art and still create something that is profound?"

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Think about music for a moment.

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In music, we do not require a symphony to represent a landscape.

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It might, and certain symphonies will do that, but music is taken on its own

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(man) Or the human voice ..That's right

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(second man) But music is taken on its own terms.

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Music is about tone, it's about rhythm, it's about its own internal logic.

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Painting had never been that.

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(woman) And you could say, in fact, that the Millais distracts us.

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from those things that Steven is referring to. To color, to shape, to lines.

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(man) The paint itself.

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(woman) Yeah, in a way what the Newman is doing is concentrating that.

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Look at it, don't be distracted by all these other things.

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(man) Yeah, I'm not trying to be a scene out of Shakespeare.

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(second man) But can I still be as profound, can I still be as emotionally powerful?

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Here an artist is saying that a canvas is two-dimensional;

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I am going to create something that seems at least at first

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blush to be absolutely flat. But then, look at those lines. How do they occupy space?

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Do they begin to create an illusion of space?

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In a subtle way, Beth mentioned just a moment ago

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that the lines move from the top to the bottom, so they do measure the size of the canvas and in that way,

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announce the two-dimensionality of the canvas.

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But at the same time, they are different tones and different qualities of density.

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They recede or they project forward.

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(woman) So let me ask you, do one of those lines move back, does one come forward?

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(man) It is interesting, there is that, it has this core primitive dimensionality to it

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and you start to see ...I never thought of it that way before.

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You are right, what is on the left is a lie. It's something trying to be something that it's not

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while on the right, it literally is, this is the painting. The painting is what you are trying to see.

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It's not trying to be a TV set for the rest of reality.

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(second man) So there is a kind of fundamental truth to

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the painting on the right that was up-ending 2,000 years of representation

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(man) Or longer, probably, I mean cave paintings right?

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(second man) One could say 38,000 years of tradition.

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How radical is that? How brave is that? How heroic is that?