Connections/The Master Class

My name is Jack Laughner and I'm a security officer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. My topic is "The Master Class."

A very unique element to the Museum is that a lot of the guards are artists, myself being one. And as

an artist, I use the time in between answering questions and on my days off, or

that half hour before the Museum opens, to learn from the works.

I'm a pen and ink artist. I like not only the immediacy of the pen to the paper, but its black and white quality which, to the human eye is immediately abstracted. The piece shown here is called Tower of Babel, which is

my representation of a Bruegel painting, where the Tower of Babel now sits inside the main hall of the Museum.

Refinement in artwork is incredibly important. If one could peel away everything that is unnecessary you get

to the soul of the work and from there, it's much easier to understand what the artist's intentions were, or as an artist myself, what I'm trying to depict in my work.

Michelangelo, the lengths that he went to creating those very small gestures

really speaks to me as an artist, where you may be thinking to yourself, "Am I overdoing it?" You find out they went to the same lengths to create.

Albrecht Dürer's Adam and Eve is an incredible work to view.

It's quite small and the technical virtuosity almost can't be seen.

You have to get as close as you can. I get quite close and actually have to take my glasses off to see the incredible detail.

Every time I walk in front of Kunz Lochner's Armors for Man and [his] Horse, my romantic side comes out, and I

imagine the artist toiling away in his metalsmith shop

putting in detail, most likely no one ever would see.

I could speak for myself where I've been on the floor like this figure here with his head on the desk, trying to find that power inside you to create, can be very scary.

Another important element is the idea of power, and not only visual power

but the emotional or psychological effects that the work of art has.

George Grosz, here he depicts a industrialist holding a

hand puppet, which I believe to be a politician.

The background is filled with industry and destruction

and in the foreground, money and skulls.

Nast is an inspiration to me, and he's a perfect example of the pen is mightier than the sword. He

defeated Tweed, not physically, he did drawings on paper and drawings on stone, and when "Boss" Tweed was actually captured by officials in Spain, they recognized his face from Thomas Nast's drawings.

The power of consequence in this work is incredibly real. To me it's a testament to artists and to the freedom of speech that we all fight for.

Life is a battle, and it's represented here as a storm. The woman pushing on, the determination in her face, nothing is gonna keep her from protecting her child.

My attraction to a lot of these artists is the fact that, where some may choose not to or pretend to not see what's

going in the world, these artists stood up to the bullies of their time, and they never backed down.

Being faced with these masters, it's an endless fountain of inspiration. To me as an artist and to me more so as a person, that's how

I want to live my life, and that's how I always have.