Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages

This week I am playing fan favorite episodes in the run-up to my 3rd anniversary show. To kick things off, I have this mini episode on Rangoli, which is perfect for this time as many people are creating Rangoli designs as a part of their celebration of Diwali right now.Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.Connect with me:Website | Twitter | Instagram | TiktokSupport the show:Merch from TeePublic | Make a DonationAs always you can find images of the work being discussed at www.WhoARTedPodcast.com and of course, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You might hear it read out on the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The late 1930s were a rough time in Europe. Nazis were on the rise, and museums began hiding their most treasured works or even shipping them off to safe locations. As all of these works were floating around in the art world and many pieces being hidden, Hans van Meegeren emerged as an art dealer with some lost Vermeers. As I explained in the previous episode about the Vermeer stolen from the Isabella Steward Gardner museum, there aren’t a lot of Vermeer paintings and much of his biography is unknown. There are some historians who believe Vermeer studied under an artist who was heavily influenced by Caravaggio. Van Meegeren was celebrated for bringing the world the gift of these lost Caravaggio influenced Vermeer paintings. The critics loved the paintings and they loved Van Meegeren for discovering these lost works. He sold them for huge amounts and over just a few years amassed a fortune of about $30 million in today’s money. The thing is Van Meegeren would sell to anyone with money, including the Nazis. Hermann Goering, Hitler's vice chancellor was an art lover. He particularly loved the Vermeer painting he got from Van Meegeren. In the 1940s, the allies came knocking to ask why Han van Meegeren was doing business with the Nazis. Now whatever they expected to hear as his response, I guarantee they were surprised. Van Meegeren declared that he deserved to be treated as a hero for his dealings with the Nazis because all of the works he sold them were fakes. He claimed that by selling and trading these forgeries he was able to get 137 authentic Dutch masterpieces from the Nazis. It was an interesting defense, that he was not a war criminal but simply forger. It would be hard for anyone to feel sympathy for the victims of this crime but most found it too hard to believe.Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.Connect with me:Website | Twitter | Instagram | TiktokSupport the show:Merch from TeePublic | Make a DonationAs always you can find images of the work being discussed at www.WhoARTedPodcast.com and of course, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You might hear it read out on the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who ARTed has been giving you weekly art history for three years now. Help me celebrate the milestone by telling my your favorite episodes from the last three years. Go to www.WhoARTedPodcast.com/vote to tell me your favorite episodes and get a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card.There are only 36 Vermeer paintings in the world today and one was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1991. The case remains unsolved to this day. In this episode, Emily Fiedler and I discussed the museum heist along with the Vermeer painting that has been missing for the last 30 years.Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.Connect with me:Website | Twitter | Instagram | TiktokSupport the show:Merch from TeePublic | Make a DonationAs always you can find images of the work being discussed at www.WhoARTedPodcast.com and of course, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You might hear it read out on the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

William Mulmer was born in 1832. For historical context, the oldest known Daguerrotype is from 1837, so Mulmer was born right around the same time as photography, and he loved the new medium, but started off as a hobbyist. Mulmer worked as a jewelry engraver, but in his spare time, he liked taking photographs of his family and friends. In 1860 though, he took a selfie that would change the course of his life. In his self portrait, he noticed something strange. There appeared to be a ghost behind him. It just so happened that his wife was a healing medium who would help people make contact with the spirits of dead loved ones. The spiritualist movement was quite popular in the late 19th century and William Mulmer had found a way to use the latest scientific technology to photograph spirits providing dramatic and compelling images as evidence to validate the seances.While Mulmer created his spirit photographs using double exposure, basically he would put a plate of the “ghost” in front of the sensitive photographic plate while he took the spirit photo, double exposure is not the only trick people can use to capture a ghost on film.A famous ghost image was created in 1891 without a double exposure. In the image we see a seemingly empty room with a faint image of a ghostly man on a chair. We barely see the man as really only his head and arm are visible. He seems to be fading from the image and just a part of the ghostly body hangs in the air. The photo was taken in the library of Combermere Abbey shortly after Lord Combermere died in a riding accident. He was being buried at the time the photo was taken leading many to the seemingly obvious conclusion that the man in the picture was the ghost of Lord Combermere. In reality, it was a quirk of a long exposure photograph.Learn more about early photography with these episodes of Who ARTed:The World's First PhotobombLouis Daguerre The Artist's StudioWho ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.Connect with me:Website | Twitter | Instagram | TiktokSupport the show:Merch from TeePublic | Make a DonationAs always you can find images of the work being discussed at www.WhoARTedPodcast.com and of course, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You might hear it read out on the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Frank Lloyd Wright is one of America's most celebrated architects. He developed his distinctive prairie style emphasizing the horizontal planes of the landscape because he wanted his buildings to be in harmony with nature and fit in with their surroundings. While Wright was a highly respected and influential architect in the early 20th century, by the 1930s, he was seen by many as past his prime. Falling Water was a comeback piece for him demonstrating that decades into his career he could still innovate and leave people awestruck. Part of what sets this house apart from the average home built in the woods was that Wright didn't design the house to look at the scenic waterfall; he designed the house to be a part of the waterfall. My guest this week was Tim Bogatz, host of Art Ed Radio from The Art of Education University. Check out Art Ed Radio on your favorite podcast appWho ARTed is turning 3 years old. Go to www.whoartedpodcast.com/vote to vote for your favorite episodes and get a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card.Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.Connect with me:Website | Twitter | Instagram | TiktokSupport the show:Merch from TeePublic | Make a DonationAs always you can find images of the work being discussed at www.WhoARTedPodcast.com and of course, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You might hear it read out on the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who ARTed: Weekly Art History for All Ages is turning 3 years old on October 31. Please help me celebrate the milestone. Go to www.WhoARTedPodcast.com/Vote to tell me which were your favorite episodes. One voter will win a $25 Amazon gift card.The other day, one of my students asked me what would happen if he drank paint. He was joking, but it reminded me of a story of women who sometimes played around painting selves but regularly ingested microscopic bits of paint with devastating consequences. From 1917 to 1926, there was an advancement in science leading to the creation of new luminous paints. These new paints were particularly helpful with the US military in making watches that would be visible even at night. The company called these watches “Undark” I can only imagine how many hours the marketing department debated before coming up with such a brilliant name. Unfortunately, the watch didn’t quite live up to its name. While the paints did glow, the story of these watches and the people who produced them is pretty dark.Starting in 1917, the US Radium Corporation hired a bunch of young women to paint watch faces with radium based paints that would glow in the dark. For these young women, it seemed like a great job. They were paid about 3 times what the average working woman was getting at that time, they got to work with this cool new material that glowed like something from science fiction, and the job was relatively easy. They just had to lip, dip and paint. But that first part, the lip part turned out to be a major problem. The women were using camel hair brushes to paint tiny details on watch faces and instrument dials. As any painter could tell you, after just a few brush strokes, the bristles start to splay requiring them to point their brush. The women working for the US Radium Corporation, and a few rival companies of that day were all told to use their mouths to point the brush. While they could have achieved similar results with water and rags, it was more efficient for the workers to simply put the brush in their mouth using their lips, teeth and tongues to get the bristles realigned. Listeners today would no doubt be horrified at the prospect of putting radioactive material into their mouths, but for the so called radium girls, it was part of the job and for many of them, it seemed like a fun perk. There are stories of the young women painting their teeth, or their nails with the radioactive paints. Of course, as the old saying goes, it’s all fun and games until someone’s jaw falls off. Unsurprisingly, it was the dentists who first noticed the health effects of radium ingestion. The radium girls developed a condition referred to as radium jaw or necrosis of the jaw which simply put means the cells in their jaws were dying from radiation poisoning and along with that teeth fell out and bones would become distorted due to tumors or even they might be left with holes in the jawbones. Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.Connect with me:Website | Twitter | Instagram | TiktokSupport the show:Merch from TeePublic | Make a DonationAs always you can find images of the work being discussed at www.WhoARTedPodcast.com and of course, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You might hear it read out on the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hilma Af Klint, abstract painter and pioneer of automatic writing and drawing, discusses her avant-garde art, exploring topics like seances, symbolism, and the impact of her work on future generations.

In 1658, John Comenius created Orbis Sensualium Pictus, which translates to The World Around Us in Pictures. Comenius was a teacher from what is now the Czech Republic and he published his book in Latin and German, though it was a huge hit so it was quickly translated into English as well. Like so many teachers, he created his own resources to help his students learn. He created a book with 150 illustrations to make it engaging and accessible to learners of all ages with the idea that engaging the senses would help students learn. In the book, he covered a range of topics including animals, nature, the elements and religion. Interestingly while it was extremely popular and numerous copies were printed and distributed, not many are around today. That is because Orbis Sensualium Pictus was a book that was used in children’s daily education rather than stored on the shelf and through that process of repeated use, the pages were torn and bindings worn out.Help me celebrate 3 years of Who ARTed: Weekly Art History for All Ages. Who ARTed launched on October 31, 2019. Over the last 3 years and 5 seasons, I have covered a lot of stories of different artists and artworks. At the end of the month, I am planning to celebrate by rebroadcasting the most popular episodes voted by my fans. Vote for your favorite episode from each season for your chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card (Prize and raffle are from Who ARTed and not provided or run by Amazon)Click here for the voting pageThis week's fan fact came from a junior high student, Malena, who wanted to share a bit about Beatrix Potter.Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.Connect with me:Website | Twitter | Instagram | TiktokSupport the show:Merch from TeePublic | Make a DonationAs always you can find images of the work being discussed at www.WhoARTedPodcast.com and of course, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You might hear it read out on the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who ARTed is weekly art history for all ages. Every episode tells the story behind a different work of art. Who ARTed is dedicated to celebrating the arts in all forms, from all cultures and all times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paul Cezanne was an influencial post impressionist painter. He was a very thoughtful and deliberate painter taking an almost scientific approach to the landscape reducing nature to brush strokes that would indicate the various planes. He famously sought to reduce all subjects to a collection of geometric forms.For this episode, I was joined by Dr. Lex, host of the LuxeSci Podcast. Find her show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.Connect with me:Website | Twitter | Instagram | TiktokSupport the show:Merch from TeePublic | Make a DonationAs always you can find images of the work being discussed at www.WhoARTedPodcast.com and of course, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You might hear it read out on the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices