Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages

Latest Episodes:

Meret Oppenheim | Object (Luncheon in Fur) Jan 07, 2023

Show notes

In 1936, Meret Oppenheim sat down in a cafe with Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar. Picasso took note of Oppenheim's bracelet and commented that anything could be wrapped in fur. Meret replied "even this tea cup" and thus found inspiration for one of the greatest Surrealist sculptures of all time.

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MC Escher Jan 06, 2023

Show notes

MC Escher is known for his tessellations, transformations and impossible realities. In many ways he defies categorization. His work is surreal with unexpected connections, but also very geometric and academic. Unfortunately, Escher was not super popular in the fine art world. A lot of the high-brow art establishment didn’t really like his work. He didn’t have the dramatic flair that a lot of well-known artists did. He was quiet and methodical in his work. He was in an odd space where he wasn’t doing the epic sort of lyrical and expressive work that was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but then he didn’t really fit with the conceptual avante garde that came a bit later. He found an audience largely with fans of psychedelics and math. He is probably the only person to have received fan mail from both the mathematician, Roger Penrose, and the musician, Mick Jagger.

Check out these episodes to learn more:

Arts Madness Tournament links:

Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.

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Barbara Kruger | Don't Be a Jerk Jan 05, 2023

Show notes

Barbara Kruger is a contemporary artist well known for her use of text and images. She started off in the late 1960s and 70s creating work reclaiming "craft" as a part of the feminist movement using materials that had long been marginalized. After she went to teach at UC Berkley, she started to gravitate toward words. In the late 1970s, she self published a book juxtaposing text and images. She would put a photo on one page and write a small poem or phrase on the page next to it. Her work really started to take off in the 1980s as she created bold graphic works in black, white and red overlaying text on found images. Her work speaks to how labels can define who we are and who we aren't as well as confronting the viewer very directly. The next evolution of her work came in the 1990s as she shifted from creating loud images to immersive installations that were viewers could not escape these messages. The text and image were no longer just out there in the gallery space, the text and images were the space.

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Claude Monet | The Gare Saint-Lazare Jan 04, 2023

Show notes

Claude Monet loved his garden and made about 250 paintings of water lilies. He and his Impressionist contemporaries were focused on color, light, and how our eyes perceive the world, but I would say technology was also central to the development. In his paintings of the train station, The Gare Saint Lazare, Monet gives us a glimpse of iron and glass station filled with the smoke of the steam engines. One critic wrote, “Unfortunately thick smoke escaping from the canvas prevented our seeing the six paintings dedicated to this study.” While the Impressionists were overtly apolitical, there is always a statement made by what is shown and what is not shown. Even if the artist himself or herself strives to be objective simply holding a mirror to their world, which way they aim that mirror matters. Monet shows the steam engine in its element as the subject of the work not merely something in the background. Technology of course drives change in our world. In the middle of the 19th century, painters suddenly had to compete with the camera. As photographs could quickly and easily capture the lines, shapes and proportions of a subject, painters shifted their focus to the color, an element cameras could not capture at that time. The tube of paint and numerous synthetic pigments also came about in the 19th century giving artists easy access to a wider range of colors. As I look at Monet’s use of so many colors, the pinks and blues of the cloud rising from the steam engine, I think of the critics the defenders of the status quo feeling threatened by change. They feel overwhelmed by the subject and begin to choke at the sight of roaring engines filling the space with smoke and they want to look away. They want the grand facades buildings and well-dressed elites walking city streets, not the workers and machines that powered the advancements. Monet though was unwavering. He meticulously studied his subjects at different times and in different seasons to find the beauty of even the smoke and engines in the industrial space. While the critics wanted grand visions of mythology, Monet showed what he and countless others experienced in the real world.

Other episodes to listen to:

Arts Madness Tournament links:

Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.

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The Aztec Sun Stone or The Calendar Stone Jan 03, 2023

Show notes

The Sun Stone is probably the first bit of Aztec art I became familiar with even before I studied art. On its face, we see a beautiful image full of symbols laid out in radial symmetry that is just so visually satisfying, but as we look a little closer and get to know the symbols, this stone image is a lot deeper and heavier than I realized.

Arts Madness Tournament links:

Art Smart is an Airwave Media Podcast.

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As always you can find images of the work being discussed at www.ArtSmartPodcast.com and of course, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You might hear it read out on the show.

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Michelangelo Jan 02, 2023

Show notes

Michelangelo was considered to be one of the greatest examples of a Renaissance man. He is also one of the worst examples of personal hygiene. Learn a little bit about the artist who painted the ceiling on the Sistine Chapel.

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Jean-Michel Basquiat Jan 01, 2023

Show notes

Basquiat as the artist himself was like tofu, able to soak up and take on so many different flavors. Middle class child, homeless teen, bankable star of the art world. He was a graffiti artist selling postcards on the street, celebrated painter wearing armani suits to work in his studio. Basquiat inhabited so many different worlds, people can pick the story that resonates with them because as Basquiat famously said, “I am not a real person. I am a legend.”

It seems an impossible task, but I always like to look for stories that will help to understand the real person behind the legend. With Basquiat, I first learned of him as a graffiti artist turned studio artist. The graffiti work that helped him rise to prominence was a team effort. Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz made humorous, thoughtful and critical text based pieces on the walls of Manhatten. In Diaz’s telling when he got to know Basquiat as a teen, it was immediately obvious to him, that Jean Michel was not a graffiti artist. Diaz laughed as he said Basuiat “drew the sliding doors in a subway car and put his name in it: ‘Jean the Bohemian.’ That was his tag.”

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Njideka Akunyili Crosby | Predecessors Dec 31, 2022

Show notes

Njideka Akunyili Crosby is a Nigerian-born artist who moved to America as a teen and her work Predecessors looks at how her family has changed over generations. She uses painting and collage techniques to share her memories and connect different aspects of her identity as she has roots in both Nigeria and America.

If you want to learn more, check out the full episode I recorded with Janet Taylor, an artist, art teacher, and writer for The Art of Education University.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby (full episode)

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Paul Cezanne | Mont Sainte-Victoire Dec 30, 2022

Show notes

Cezanne is widely celebrated today, but he struggled early on. He was rejected by Beaux Arts multiple times. He went back home to work at the bank for a while but he felt compelled to pursue the arts and he persisted. He met other artists like Renoir and Monet who had also been rejected by academic establishment and many critics of the day. The supported each other and learned from each other. In 1863, people were so sick of being rejected by the Paris Salon, they actually set up “Salon des Refuses” (salon of the rejected) next to the official salon to exhibit works by Monet, Manet, Pissarro. Cezanne would have loved to have his paintings exhibited in The Paris Salon, but his work hung in The Salon des Refuses.

Related episodes to check out:

Arts Madness Tournament links:

Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.

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Roy Lichtenstein | Look Mickey Dec 29, 2022

Show notes

Season 6 is covering the artists in this year's Arts Madness Tournament. I will be releasing 64 mini episodes in 64 days to give you a quick refresher on all the different artists and artworks in the tournament.

By the 1960s Roy Lichtenstein was intrigued by the ideas of pop art and began dabbling in the style. Of course, if you want fresh new ideas, the best source is often the younger generation. Roy Lichtenstein was pushed by his young son. One day in 1961, the younger Lichtenstein taunted his father holding up his copy of the Disney book Donald Duck: Lost and Found. He pointed to an illustration and said, “I bet you can’t draw something as good as that?” In what can only be described as one of the greatest “so there’s” of all time Roy Lichtenstein made a direct copy of the illustration painting onto a canvas four feet tall and almost six feet wide. In doing so, he was not only successful in sticking it to his son, Roy Lichtenstein became a tremendous success in the art world.

Arts Madness Tournament links:

Episodes to check out for further learning:

Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.

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