Let's start from the end, you have spent a month at the Prado observing how we look at art. What do you think Velázquez or El Bosco would see if they could observe us, the visitors of the 21st century?
That is a great question. Artists create their works and then these take their own path, live their own life, and the artists have little to say about it. Could Velázquez have imagined that the paintings he painted for royalty would someday be owned by the people, and that he, Titian, Rubens, and Goya would hang together in a modern palace visited by literally millions of ordinary people each year? Not even close. One thing we forget is that looking at art is difficult. In fact, it is meant to be difficult. Seeing what happens in a Velázquez painting requires concentration, effort, intelligence, curiosity, and patience. And the painting changes as you look at it: it focuses, it reveals. What the Prado and other museums do is create a place where that can happen, a space where people have the freedom to look. I suspect that Velázquez and the others would feel deeply grateful to see their works alive, growing, and changing in that way.
In your book Strange Tools, you argue that art is not just representation, but also investigation. Can we say that artists think with materials in the same way that philosophers think with ideas?
What do these artists do? Why does it matter to us? What do they achieve? It is true that they create images, but... there are so many. And how is it possible that we can look at the same image again and again and still find it interesting or fascinating. What is happening there? What are their works really made of? Yes, of paint, but also of ideas, materials, and the fact that we ourselves are also material beings. So, in a way, I believe that works of art shed light on the nature of the human.
And what do they teach us about the world?
I think all art - music, performance, painting - allows us to marvel at the act of becoming aware. When you enter a gallery, at first there is nothing: just an object hanging on the wall. The other day, for example, I went to see Radiohead in concert: at first, it's just noise, you have to focus, tune in. Art allows you to marvel as you do that. And in reality, we do that constantly in life. When I meet someone culturally or politically different from me, or younger, older, transgender, whatever, I need to connect, I need to see them, if I want to. I wouldn't say that art teaches us to do that, but it is an environment in which we can cultivate that capacity to see - and when I say see, I mean perceive, in general.
You claim that art disrupts our perceptual routines. What does that mean?
One of the interesting things about art is that it is always more, and it resists labels. You see the painting, read the title, and it doesn't give you the answer: you have to spend time figuring out what it is. In a way, it refuses to define itself, it refuses to be summarized. So, to see the work, you have to change yourself, question your own expectations. That is the disruption: you can't rely on habit. It's not enough to say "oh, the Virgin Mary, I know." If I look at an El Greco, I have to completely reorganize myself to be able to see it. And that is productive.
And does contemporary art still fulfill that role of awakening perception?
Yes, absolutely. Even more than the art at the Prado, because old works depend a lot on historical context, while with contemporary art, we share the context. Artists work directly with us. But it's difficult: people want security, they want to be told "this is good, this is worth it, you should like it." With contemporary art, you can't do that, because we don't know yet. You have to decide for yourself.
Since we are at the Prado, is there any work or artist that particularly teaches us how to look?
I have seen two. The first one is Fra Angelico's The Annunciation. It is a stunning painting, its religious content is very powerful. And I saw something I had never seen before: people praying to the painting, right there, in the room. It was very impactful. That painting is a whole universe of ideas about the past and the present, the divine and the mundane, the geometric and the emotional. If you approach it with an open mind and heart, it changes before your eyes. Another example would be some paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder, made in collaboration with Rubens, called The Five Senses. Each one is a form of exploration of a sense. In the sense of touch, for example, there are tools, armor, workers working... but also paintings of paintings, because the artists were reflecting on art itself. I recommend to any visitor of the Prado to see them.
If you could invite a painter to talk about consciousness and art -Velázquez, Goya, Duchamp, or Warhol-, who would you choose and what do you think they would talk about?
The artists are mysterious. I don't think they even know what they are doing, or how important it is. They may have a lot to say, but their work remains a mystery even to themselves. The artist whose work most directly shaped my interest, fascination, and thirst for perception is Cézanne. He understood that painting is an experiment with consciousness and also a way to change the world. But all artists do that, to a greater or lesser extent.
Art and the way of perceiving it have evolved over the centuries. Has this meant an evolution or an involution of human consciousness?
I address this topic in Strange Tools, but I delve deeper into it in my book The Entanglement, which will be released in Spain next year. I believe that what artists truly create is us. The history of art is the history of us. We change, we evolve. When someone asks, "Does artificial intelligence exist?" I respond: we are the artificial intelligence.
Can art be considered a form of knowledge on the same level as science or philosophy?
I believe that art does not give us knowledge. Art changes us. It doesn't answer our questions; it gives us new questions and helps us see what was hidden behind what we thought we knew. In reality, philosophy is more similar to art than to science. Philosophers, like artists, experiment, and the value of their experiments is not in teaching you the truth but in changing the way you see what you already know. Art and philosophy are siblings.
Do you think we have unlearned how to look, especially young people, because of screens?
All parents are concerned about that. My daughter just turned 14 and already has her first cell phone. I waited until almost 14 because I wanted her to learn to look at the world before looking through a phone. Looking is more difficult than we think. We think we open our eyes and there is the world, but most of the time we don't see anything: we go from one place to another without looking. Cultivating the interest in letting what is there present itself to us and presenting ourselves to it is not biological, it is spiritual, cognitive, personal. There is a saying that I quote in The Entanglement: "If you want to see something new, walk the same path every day." Look, look again, look once more. And art is where we learn that. Screens, on the other hand, teach us to click, swipe, click, swipe... It's as if we seek the satisfaction of having seen without truly seeing. Screens are something dangerous, but they are not going to disappear. We have to learn to live with them. I want my children to enjoy a short text, but also a novel; a one-minute YouTube video, but also a movie by Almodóvar that demands attention. Additionally, nowadays people photograph everything: dinner, a painting, even a kiss. Why? What is the need? Is it escapism or a new way of being aware? We still don't have the verdict.
If the mind is not in the brain, what kind of science do we need to study it: biology, philosophy, theology?
All of them. Art is our way of understanding ourselves, not through scientific information, but through intuitive understanding. Science should look at some art to understand us. Human beings are like works of art: we are not fixed or stable. Science needs defined objects, but we are constantly changing, and by questioning ourselves, we change even more. That's why there is no Darwin, no Watson and Crick, of the human mind. This reveals that consciousness is not fixed: it is always in becoming. It is not magical, but it is not purely natural either. It is the work that a living being does to relate to its world, and it depends on the brain, the body, the environment, and culture.
Would that immaterial expansion of the brain be the soul?
In my intellectual tradition, I don't usually use the word soul, but lately I have started to think that maybe it is the right word. But for me, the soul is embodied: it is not material, but it also does not exist without the body. There is no soul without the body. And I am not a theologian, so I must be cautious. One of my ideas is that we are not static: we are becoming. We make ourselves, in action and in community: family, friends, country, perhaps church. We are more than each of us separately.
Our technological capacity and fake news are not making it easy for us to learn how to look.
The task of every human being is to be present. To allow the world to show itself to us, and that does not come for free: it must be worked on. Truth is many things because it is connected to stories: poetic, mythical, fantastic... and all contain truth. But the fundamental thing is to show up, to tune in, to relate to the world. We must fight against propaganda and control mechanisms that prevent us from doing so.
In Out of Our Heads, you invite us to "get out of our heads," but I don't know what's in them when I see the current political debate. Do you think the world urgently needs a kind of mental escape therapy?
We live in a world in crisis. There is no doubt. Wars, pandemics, inflation, climate disaster, migration. We live with fear, and fear leads us to make bad decisions. What I argue in the book is that we are already, and have always been, out of our heads, in the sense that we are who we are, as individuals, in community. I believe it is these communities that need therapy. Speaking as an American, and referring only to my own society, it is more important than ever to look at our fellow citizens with love, appreciation, and kindness, and work to transform fear into a sense of security and possibility.
If artificial intelligence learns to see, speak, and create art, is that perception or simulation? What is missing for true consciousness to emerge?
The key thing to remember is that artificial intelligence is a tool. It is our instrument. We have created it to play our games. It does not invent its own. It speaks our language, makes art for us, translates for us, serves us. All intelligence, creativity, meaning, and value are ours. There is no more mind inside artificial intelligence than inside my pencil.
You argue that consciousness is something we do, not something we have. But I don't know what kind of consciousness we are creating surrounded by notifications, algorithms, and virtual assistants that seem to know us better than we know ourselves?
You raise an important question. Is it possible to be completely scattered when we are totally connected? Yes. And there is no doubt that new media are changing our attention habits, imposing new limits on our patience. Young people find movies very long! We have become accustomed to those brief, intense, and rapid doses of news, wisdom, or wit. And AI assistants that complete our thoughts contribute to the unstoppable acceleration of almost everything. It is also alarming that these notifications and algorithms are created and disseminated by people who do not necessarily have our best interests in mind. At the same time, there are reasons for some optimism. It is true that everything new is ultimately a reinvention of what came before. There was a time when it was thought that television would ruin us. And long before that, people worried about the long-term effects of writing. So perhaps young people will find ways to control these new forms of connectivity so that they truly become sources of connection, friendship, and community. What would our lives be without writing? Without television? Without text messages? Without artificial intelligence? These are important questions worth pondering.
After so much time reflecting on perception, is there anything you can look at without analyzing? Do you go to the supermarket as a philosophical experiment?
Every experience, no matter how ordinary, routine, or banal it may seem, is an opportunity for discovery. A leaf falling in the gutter. A cup on the table. A trip to the supermarket. In every experience, there is always more if we pay attention. But you can't always do it: sometimes you have to focus on the immediate task -choosing the right breakfast cereal, instead of contemplating the beauty of the different options-. That's what art is about: working on that border, making what is already there more present. But you don't need to be an artist, a philosopher, or a neuroscientist to appreciate everything around us that we normally overlook.
And finally, if you had to summarize your philosophical project in a single question, what would it be?
This is the most difficult question. Let me think... Well, I'll improvise. The first would be: what is a human being? But then quickly: what is the world? Because a human being has a world. And another question: what is love? If I am right that consciousness is the work of creating relationships, then that is love. Perhaps the work of consciousness is the work of love. We say that we walk through life without seeing, because to see you have to enter into a relationship: with your partner, your child, the keyboard, the painting, or the person in front of you. You give a bit of yourself, and then it appears. It wasn't there before. It is a brief love, but real. So my work is about consciousness, about being human, and about love. And my questions would be: what is the relationship between being, consciousness, and love?