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PODCAST

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages

Who Arted is art history and art education for everyone. While most art history podcasts focus on the traditional "fine art" we see in museums around the world, Who ARTed celebrates art in all of its forms and in terms anyone can understand. Each episode tells the story of a different artist and artwork including the traditional big names like Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol along with lesser-known artists working in such diverse media as video game design, dance, the culinary arts,

arts visual arts

All Episodes

7:37

Gustave Eiffel | The Eiffel Tower

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/27

The Eiffel Tower was by far the largest structure built for the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris. Eiffel was an entrepreneur and he had two engineers working with him to plan the iron tower, but not everyone was on board with the design. Audiences today may be surprised to hear that many Parisians thought the design was an eyesore and a blight on their beautiful city. The architect Stephen Sauvestre was commissioned to work on the design to make it less ugly. He drafted arches, glass-walled halls on every

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8:13

Salvador Dali | The Persistence of Memory (encore)

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/26

Salvador Dali's most famous painting is The Persistence of Memory from 1931. The painting is surprisingly small just 9 ½ by 13 inches or slightly larger than the average sheet of paper. It is one of the most widely recognized and referenced images of the surrealist movement. For those who don’t know it by name, you will likely recognize the description of clocks melting in the desert. The melting of clocks much like the ambiguous figure in the middle of the composition references a metamorphosis

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7:25

Jean-Honore Fragonard | The Swing

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/25

Jean-Honore Fragonard’s painting, The Swing is one of those rare pieces that feels so immediately accessible it has begun to make the leap from the museum gallery wall to pop culture. Early in the immensely popular Disney movie Frozen, the character of Anna jumps up in front of the painting to mimic the expression of the woman on the swing. It was a moment that portrayed Anna as spontaneous and caught up in the moment but also foreshadowed a love interest with perhaps less than noble intentions

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10:00

Johannes Vermeer | Woman Holding a Balance

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/24

Vermeer created stunning works and he is widely celebrated as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. This painting, Woman Holding a Balance is a work intended to encourage temperance and moderation being mindful that divine judgment is looming in the end. Related episodes: The Unbelievable Story of Han van Meegeren Jan van Eyck | The Arnolfini Portrait Arts Madness 2024 links: The Brackets Spotify Playlist Prediction Form Check out my other podcasts Art Smart | Rainbow Puppy

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7:33

Kwakwaka’wakw artist | Eagle Transformation Mask

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/23

The transformation mask is a carved and painted sculpture, a status symbol, a costume element and a simple machine all at once. Pulling the strings on the mask allows the wearer to move parts that effectively animate the mask and bring it to life in front of the gathered crowd. Kwakwaka’wakw artists created a number of different masks representing different figures. Arts Madness 2024 links: The Brackets Spotify Playlist Prediction Form Check out my other podcasts Art Smart | Rainbow Puppy

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8:23

Auguste Rodin | The Burghers of Calais

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/22

Today's mini-episode is about Auguste Rodin and his sculpture of The Burghers of Calais. The story behind the piece is an inspiring tale that defines courage. During the Hundred Years' War, the English had the city of Calais surrounded. As the days went on and the French army was unable to break the siege, the townspeople were forced to begin negotiating terms of surrender. They were told the town would be spared if 6 burghers (a burgher was a title, so these were the town leaders) would sacrifice

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8:13

Robert Smithson | Spiral Jetty

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/21

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 also experienced. Walking the spiral would be an almost meditative act similar to circumambulating or walking around a Hindu temple. Other content mentioned in this episode: The Nazca Lines Arts Madness 2024 links: The

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8:32

Vincent van Gogh | The Starry Night

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/20

Vincent van Gogh saw little commercial success during his lifetime, but he loved art and he worked to forge relationships with other artists he could learn from. The Starry Night came about late in his short career after Vincent van Gogh was hospitalized. He painted the view from his window, but rather than painting things exactly as he saw them, he painted a sort of composite landscape of views from different nights and even different locations. He moved the cypress tree to the foreground and added

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13:27

Jean-Antoine Houdon | George Washington

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/19

Jean-Antoine Houdon was one of the greatest neoclassical sculptors in the late 18th century. Shortly after the American Revolution, the governor of Virginia asked Thomas Jefferson to find a sculptor to make a marble statue of George Washington for the state capital building. Jefferson was a self-taught architect and a big believer in the neoclassical movement's use of symbolism in art to convey a message that would leave the viewer wiser. He naturally turned to Houdon who traveled from France to

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42:11

Piet Mondrian | Composition with Red Blue and Yellow

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/18

Piet Mondrian is best known for painting primary colored squares and rectangles. For this episode, fellow art teacher, Jeff Arndt and I talked about the big ideas that led Mondrian to make such simple work. He pushed the ideas of modern abstract art further than anyone else. Mondrian limited himself to basic elements of simple lines, shapes, and colors to focus on the principles of design like balance and proportion. A common misconception about Mondrian is that his personal life was as bland as his

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35:27

Rachel Ruysch | Fruit and Insects

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/17

Rachel Ruysch was an incredibly skilled Dutch painter in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. She was renowned for her still lives. The objects in this work were carefully selected and the image is loaded with symbolism. Her painting, Fruit and Insects is one of the works on the list for the AP Art History curriculum. Those prepping for the test may want to check out my Spotify playlist: AP Art History Cram Session to learn about a number of artists and works that may appear on the test. Arts

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9:38

Diego Velazquez | Las Meninas

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/16

Diego Velazques was one of the most significant painters of Spain's Golden Age in the 17th century. He was a master of both portraiture and genre painting, Las Meninas is a sort of mix of both. We see people who seem rather formally dressed by today’s standards, but the subject is also, it was a peak behind the curtain of royal life. Withing the work, the first focal point would be the little girl, the infanta margarita, daughter of the king and queen of spain. She is dramatically lit from the side

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9:29

Faith Ringgold | Dancing at the Louvre

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/15

Faith Ringgold is a contemporary American artist. She studied art education and started as a painter, but she is best known for her story quilts. She has written and illustrated seventeen children's books. The most famous was Tar Beach which started as a quilt but later became an award-winning, best-selling book. In this episode I discussed her story quilt Dancing at the Louvre, which is one of the 250 artworks required for AP Art History courses across the US. For listeners prepping for the AP Art

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12:38

Maria and Julian Martinez | Black on Black Pottery

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/14

Maria Martinez belonged to the Tewa-speaking Pueblo people, known for their rich artistic heritage. Pottery-making was deeply rooted in Puebloan culture, serving as a means of artistic expression and a reflection of their close connection with the natural world. Maria grew up watching her family members create pottery, learning the traditional techniques. Of course, we seldom talk about those who simply carry on a tradition. Maria Martinez and her husband Julian revolutionized pottery production and

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18:34

Helen Frankenthaler | The Bay

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/13

The Bay was painted in 1963 as Frankenthaler had refined her soak and stain process. While Mountains and Sea was made with diluted oil paints, The Bay is acrylic on unprimed canvas. She had found that using acrylics gave her greater control over the viscosity or how fluid the paint was. As I look at The Bay, the title indicates a landscape and the brightness, the organic shapes of blue and green give me a sense of a Bay, but it feels like it is more about a happy, contented sort of tone. There is

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8:52

Thomas Jefferson | Monticello

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/12

Thomas Jefferson may be a surprising person to find in an art history podcast, but the writer of the Declaration of Independence, third president of the US was also a self-taught architect. Monticello is considered a UNESCO Heritage Site. Jefferson believed that great architecture could not only reflect the community, but also inspire the people to seek enlightenment. Monticello is a neoclassical masterpiece that illustrates the duality of Jefferson as a brilliant idealist who was also a flawed man

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10:05

Jean-Michel Basquiat | Horn Players

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/11

Jean-Michel Basquiat has created some of the most highly valued American paintings ever to go on auction. Basquiat sought to remake art history in his image, and I would say he was successful. His triptych, Horn Players, is one of the artworks required for the AP Art History curriculum studied by American high school students. In the middle of February 1981, a group exhibition opened at P.S.1 in New York. The show featured over a hundred different artists from the underground art scene. There were

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10:27

JMW Turner | The Slave Ship

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/10

Turner's painting of The Slave Ship from 1840 was originally titled "Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying" and the event that inspired this work is exactly as horrific as it sounds. The captain of the ship was throwing men overboard in order to collect insurance money on those lost at sea, or to use a more accurate term, murdered. In this episode, I mentioned that one of my favorite fellow Airwave Media podcasts, The Constant, did an episode about how ships would be sent to sea to sink for

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11:07

Raphael | The School of Athens

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/09

While Raphael sadly passed away just in his 30s his work has lived on for hundreds of years. Learn a bit about the great Renaissance painter and architect as well as his most famous work, The School of Athens. Other episodes to check out: Art Smart: The Renaissance Michelangelo Leonardo da Vinci (theft of the Mona Lisa), (The Last Supper) Arts Madness 2024 I am once again posting daily mini-episodes ahead of my annual Arts Madness Tournament. I planned this year's tournament to make it

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14:07

Michelangelo | The Sistine Chapel Ceiling (mini)

Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages ·

2024/02/08

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. Related episodes: Michelangelo | The Sistine Chapel Ceiling Art Smart: The Renaissance Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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