About Art

Jean Jullien is a French graphic artist living and working in Paris. His practice ranges from painting and illustration to photography, video, costume, installations, books, posters and clothing to create a coherent yet eclectic body of work. In this episode he and Zuckerman talk about his clan and his mother’s iconic hairstyle, describing versus telling, what is enough, how to judge cultural impact, clusters, and saying “yes, but.”

Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. His work is included in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art. His collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males, In Search Of The Truth (The Truth Booth), Writing on the Wall, and the artist-run initiative for art and civic engagement For Freedoms. He and Zuckerman discussed anxiety, infinite wisdom, positivity bias, infinite possibility, God, the quality of the question, and the remaining opportunities for freedom.

Tom Sachs’s sculptures, often recreations of modern icons using everyday materials, are conspicuously handmade; lovingly cobbled together from plywood, resin, steel, and ceramic. The scars and imperfections in the sculptures tell the story of how it came into being and remove it from the realm of miraculous conception. His studio team of ten, functions like a teaching hospital or cult, that worships plywood and an ethos of transparency. Friends for over two decades, he and Zuckerman discuss making as meditation, making the best of limited resources, output before input, what surprises him, the existential abyss, and his secret weapon to being an artist.

JiaJia Fei is a digital strategist and founder of the first digital agency for art. She and Zuckerman discussed being an evening person, access to free art museums, how to find your own information, the future of funding and philanthropy and access to techpreneurs, how art can exist for the screen, and what could be their shared Kurt Vonnegut epitaph.

Richard Betts passed the Court of Master Sommeliers’ Masters Exam on the first attempt, the ninth person ever to do so. He co-founded the wine labels Betts & Scholl in 2003 and Scarpetta in 2006 and founded Sombra Mezcal in 2006. Today, Richard spends his time guiding Astral Tequila, and his newest wine project “An Approach To Relaxation.” Richard is the New York Times best-selling author of “The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert.” He and Zuckerman discussed the long term effects of nurture, a deep-seated fear of failure, when he proposed to his wife, how it feels to give back, and working at the intersection of enthusiasm and opportunity!

Amy Cappellazzo is Chairman of the Fine Art division of Sotheby’s. Prior to accepting the position, Cappellazzo founded Art Agency, Partners with Allan Schwartzman, which in January of 2016 Sotheby’s acquired in a groundbreaking deal. Cappellazzo previously served as a market leader in the field of contemporary art at Christie’s, where she rose to the post of Chairman of Post-War & Contemporary Development over thirteen years. She and Zuckerman discussed adult social behavior around art and the future of Not for Profit galas, the pace of museum curating, the highest and best use of anything, a sexy painting by Patricia Cronin, and being an attentive and attuned mother in this episode.

Dennis Scholl is a filmmaker, winemaker, collector, entrepreneur, and artist advocate. In this episode he and Zuckerman talk about him being an obsessive guy, “ going country” and sacred Aboriginal lands, the mistake of not valuing artists, how it feels to live with art placed by other people, and why opening the aperture is key to a meaningful and joyful life!

Gary Simmons uses chalk as his main medium, utilizing the traces and ghost like effects of the chalk to portray compelling messages involving racial stereotypes. Throughout his conversation with Zuckerman, they touch on his athletic past, the intricacies of his 50 foot mural at the Dallas Cowboys Stadium, and why he helped dig a trench for Robert Irwin, along with other compelling tales of his youth!

Kathy DeMarco VanCleve is the author of books Never Caught, The Difference Between You and Me, and Drizzle, numerous screen plays, and on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. In this episode, she and Zuckerman speak about poetry, where glory is found, the importance of being kind, death, cancer, and parenting.

With his paintings, Richard Phillips is a master of seduction – he plays upon the complex web of human obsessions with sexuality, politics, power, and death.   He uses classical painterly techniques to make things and people you have seen before look and feel unfamiliar and mean something different. We discussed the first art car to win at Le Mans, what it feels like to unintentionally make a lot of people really mad, Gossip Girl, and what can stand in the way of love.