Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages

Latest Episodes:

Alma Thomas | Resurrection May 23, 2022

Show notes

While Alma Thomas worked for decades as a teacher, but she continued pursuing her art. She took classes at American University in Washington. She showed her work in group exhibitions with other African American artists. While she obviously experienced some setbacks as a black woman, her work was not taking on feminist or racial themes. Her early works in the 1950s were generally academic, realistic works and while they were fine, they didn’t stand out too much. During this period though, as she was studying at American Universtiy she became more interested in color and abstraction.

In 1966 Howard University offered to put on a retrospective show of her work. She was actually considering giving up painting due to arthritis pain but with that tremendous opportunity, she wanted to produce something new. She looked out her window and was struck by the color. She watched the sunlight shift the colors on the trees and the flowers in her garden and she began working in a more expressionistic, abstract style.

Ultimately, she is best known for her abstract works. Her style is characterized by mosaic like splashes of color somewhat like the impressionists, but also borrowing a bit from color field painters.

I think one of the most inspiring bits is she rose to prominence as an artist after three decades teaching (she taught junior high for 35 years). She continued pursuing her passion and demonstrated it is never too late to learn, grow and develop your talents.

In an interview in 1970, she said, “Creative art is for all time and is therefore independent of time. It is of all ages, of every land, and if by this we mean the creative spirit in man which produces a picture or a statue is common to the whole civilized world, independent of age, race and nationality; the statement may stand unchallenged.”

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The Mysterious Mona Lisa May 20, 2022

Show notes

Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of The Mona Lisa, also called La Gioconda has captured society’s collective imagination. Her hold on the audience is so intense there is a widely known phenomenon called, The Mona Lisa Effect referring to the experience of feeling like the subject of an image is looking directly at the viewer no matter where one is standing in the room. Simply put, people feel like Mona Lisa is staring at them and her eyes follow them around the room. According to scientists at Bielefeld Unversity in Germany, La Gioconda does not look directly at the viewer. Her gaze is said to be about 15 degrees to the right looking at the viewer’s ear or over their shoulder. They concluded that ironically, The Mona Lisa does not demonstrate the Mona Lisa effect.

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Norman Rockwell | The Problem We All Live With May 16, 2022

Show notes

Norman Rockwell is probably best known for his wholesome and nostalgic illustrations that graced the covers of The Saturday Evening Post for decades. His name has become shorthand for an idealized version of America but as we all know, in great art, there is always more than meets the eye. In this episode, we did not focus on Rockwell’s depictions of the American mythos. If you are interested in that stuff, check out my previous episode on Freedom from Want. For this episode, we focused on the hard truths Rockwell depicted in The Problem We All Live With. This is a piece about the struggle surrounding race, integration and equity and regardless of race, gender, ability, religion or other cultural identifiers, the struggle for equity is one we all live with because injustice for anyone is a harm to everyone. Norman Rockwell believed that our ideal of all people being treated fairly was important enough that he felt compelled to use his platform and his talents to call attention to it.

My guest this week is Candido Crespo, fellow art teacher and host of Everyday Art Room from The Art of Education University. He is doing a ton of good work and here are the various places you can find him: https://linktr.ee/crespoarts

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The Taj Mahal (Fun Fact Friday) May 13, 2022

Show notes

The Taj Mahal is one of the most beautiful man-made structures in the world. It is a UNESCO world heritage site considered to be one of the modern wonders of the world. The story behind its construction is equally beautiful as it is a tale of love and devotion between Shah Jahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal who passed away shortly after giving birth to their fourteenth child.

The Taj Mahal has a massive dome stretching 240 feet covered in marble. The are four thin white marble minarets to mark the four corners. Of course without cranes, getting giant slabs of marble to such heights was no easy task. A ramp would be constructed to bring the pieces up, and to keep the incline manageable the ramp used for this construction had to be about 10 miles long.

Shah Jahan never really got over the loss of his wife. He remained in mourning for years before his position was usurped by his fourth son. He was imprisoned in a fort in Agra in 1658. He was forbidden to leave and spent the final 8 years of his life in the fort looking out the window at the Taj Mahal. When he died in 1666, Shah Jahan was reunited with his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal in the crypt beneath the Taj Mahal.

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Takashi Murakami | Mr Dobs (encore) May 09, 2022

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Olowe of Ise | Veranda Post (Fun Fact Friday) May 06, 2022

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The bulk of Olowe’s carvings seem to have been both decorative and functional artworks for the Yoruba kings and prominent families. One of his celebrated works for example is the veranda post that sits in the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. In that piece we see the elongated neck and oval faces that were a part of his signature style. Traditionally Yoruba artists used scale and proportion to indicate hierarchy. The more important a figure, the larger they are within the composition. The status of the king’s senior wife is shown by her size while the king is seated central to the post. His crown eye level to the viewer and the king sits with his feat up above the ground signifying his transcendent nature. His eyes are cast down expressing a contemplative mood as he looks down on the world beyond. The crown has four ancestral faces signifying the legitimacy of his royal lineage, the divine line and wisdom running through it.

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Henri Matisse - The Dessert: Harmony in Red (Encore) May 02, 2022

Show notes

This is an encore presentation of the episode about Henri Matisse and his painting The Dessert: Harmony in Red from 1908.

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Louis Sullivan & the Carson Pirie Scott Building (Fun Fact Friday) Apr 29, 2022

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In 1896, Louis Sullivan wrote about skyscrapers and architectural design in “The Tall Building Artistically Considered” This was the origin of the famous phrase, “form follows function.” What Sullivan actually said was “form must ever follow function” but regardless of phrasing, the meaning remains the same - architects should first consider how a building will be used then base the design on that.

I remember when I was in school hearing my art history professor describe the early modern architectural philosophy like a layer cake. Sullivan argued that the building should be considered in tiers. At the base level, the business should be easily accessible to the public. It should be light and open and the second story should also be easily accessed by stairways. Above that, there should be offices. The offices should be uniform. They should look the same to unify the design and because they are all serving the same purpose. This section can have as many stories as needed and desired, then finally the attic at the top. Sullivan argued the attic story should have distinctive molding or a cornice to add not only a decorative flourish but to mark an end point to the building. Simultaneously this decorative topper would serve to set the building apart from others in the skyline.

While the building bears Sullivan’s name today, and he was a very important and influential architect, he was not an easy man to work with. One of the things many people leave out of the story of this building is the fact that a different architect, Daniel Burnham was hired to complete the last phase of the building in 1906. Louis Sullivan had a reputation for being great artist but awful human and his career suffered because of it. In the end, Sullivan died penniless. Another great architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, actually took up a collection and paid for Sullivan’s burial and stone inscribed to pay tribute to Sullivan’s legacy. While the man may be gone, his words that “form must ever follow function” have been repeated in textbooks and etched in stone to live on influencing generations to come.

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Marcel Duchamp - Fountain (encore) Apr 25, 2022

Show notes

Marcel Duchamp's Fountain was a controversial early readymade. It has been named one of the most influential artworks of the 20th century and it is on the list of required works for AP Art History students to learn about. Since the Art History AP test is just a few weeks away, I thought this would be a good time to drop an encore presentation giving a little bit of contextual information to understand how a toilet could make such a splash in the art world.

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Fun Fact Friday - Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty Apr 22, 2022

Show notes

Robert Smithson decided to make monumental sculptures using perhaps the world’s oldest material, the earth itself, but he used modern tools to shape it in a way and on a scale rarely seen. Spiral Jetty is as the name would suggest, a spiral. Part of what makes it special is the enormousness of it. On the peninsula at Rozel Point on Utah’s Great Salt Lake, Smithson created his most famous monumental sculpture using over six thousand tons of black basalt rocks and earth from the site. The spiral forms a path out onto the lake. It is intended to be not only witnessed, but experienced. Walking the spiral would be an almost meditative act similar to circumambulating or walking around a hindu temple. The spiral allows people to walk out onto the lake. A small speck on a vast lake witnessing the entropy of nature as the water erodes the foundation. The gigantic piece built from thousands of tons of stone has been decaying from the moment it was built. It was a giant monument to nature demonstrating the concept of entropy. It was born out of a time of social upheaval and changing norms leaving in which people were rethinking the ways they related to both nature and the constructed environment which now that I’m saying it out loud could just as easily be a description of pretty much any time period as the only true constant is change.

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