Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages

This is an encore presentation of my episode covering a lesser known bit of art history - the Nazca Lines. In the Peru there are massive geoglyphs etched in the ground with the full design only visible from the sky leaving people to wonder how they were created around 500 CE and for whom to enjoy.Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.Connect with me:Website | Twitter | Instagram | TiktokSupport the show:Merch from TeePublic | Buy me a coffeeAs 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

This is a two part episode about Vincent Van Gogh.Part 1 focuses on his early life and development up to his first masterpiece,The Potato Eaters from 1885. Next week we will discuss the mature phase of his career and how his style shifted upon moving to France.Remember this week I am also starting season 2 of Art Smart with new episodes coming every Wednesday. Please be sure to follow Art Smart on your favorite podcast app and leave a rating or review to help others discover the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Scream by Edvard Munch is one of the most famous artworks out there, and one of the most widely referenced. We see it in pop culture on t-shirts and posters, in the Simpsons and other cartoon parodies and one of the most famous scenes in the movie Home Alone saw Kevin mimic the pose of The Scream as he put on after shave. Of course, while we think we know the work, there is a lot people get wrong. For example, the painting isn't about a person screaming. Munch was painting his feeling of anxiety being overwhelmed as he heard the scream of nature all around him. Also, some say the figure in the painting was based on a Peruvian mummy that was on display around that time.For my second segment, we got a little-known fact about mummies from Andrew and Kate, the hosts of Let's Talk Petty. They have a few more episodes to go in their first season, and if you aren't familiar, check them out. I got hooked on the show when I came across their episode on the petty rivalry between Stuart Semple and Anish Kapoor.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

This is a bonus episode of my other show, Art Smart. Season 2 is coming July 20 with new episodes every Wednesday. In this bonus episode, I discussed the steps to make sense of any work of art. For season 2 of Art Smart, I will be making art history quick and easy. Each episode will focus on a different time period or movement in art covering the big ideas in broad strokes, then sharing a few artists and works to look at for a better understanding.Please follow Art Smart on your favorite podcast app and leave a rating or review to help others find the show.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

For this episode, I talked to Janet Taylor, art teacher and writer for the Art of Education. She actually taught be about Njideka Akunyili Crosby, the contemporary Nigerian/American painter. Njiedeka Akunyili Crosby was born in 1983 in Enugu, Nigeria. Her father was a surgeon and mother was a professor of pharmacology. Her mother won the green card lottery allowing Njideka to come to the U.S. to study when she was 16. She spent a year studying and prepping for the SATs then went back to Nigeria to perform a year of service. After completing the year of service, she came back to the U.S. She took her first painting classes at a community college in Philadelphia then went on to Swarthmore. She was initially pre-med before deciding to pursue art. After Swarthmore, she went to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, then went on to get her MFA from Yale. A lot of her work focuses on straddling different worlds and her connections to Nigeria and the U.S. She uses painting with some collage methods like integration of fabric but particularly transfers. These methods not only integrate patterns and textures but also enrich the work through the connections to pop culture and other icons embedded as details to be discovered within her work. In 2017, she got the MacArthur genius grant which pretty much says it all right there. Her CV could make even the most accomplished among us question their adequacy. For this episode we looked at Predecessors from 2013. As always you can see the piece linked here in the show notes, or visit www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com to see this week‘s work as well as previous pieces and free resources for art teachers. If you enjoy the show, please help spread the word. Like, Subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in southern China had over 140 works stolen from their collection, but nobody noticed for years. This is because the thief replaced every item he stole… with his own paintings.Now some guy working in a museum quietly helping himself to the collection of artworks then replacing them with his own copies seems pretty strange and bold, but this next bit brings the story to next-level bananas territory. According to Xiao theft and forgery were rampant. He said he noticed that people were stealing his forgeries and replacing them with their forgeries. It kinda makes you wonder if he was getting the originals or if he was forging a copy of a forgery. I mean he did steal and copy work by Zang Daqian, a landscape and still-life painter who was also considered to be a master forger himself. Xiao plead guilty in court, but warned that the lax security was causing big problems for the university’s collection. He said that he noticed fakes in there from his first day on the job and obviously quite a few more of them popping up throughout his time there. My Fan Fact this week came from my friend over at The Big Balance podcast. You can find The Big Balance on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your 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.If you would like to share a fun fact for a future episode, email me at whoartedpodcast@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

July 4 is America's celebration of independence from England. In honor of the holiday, I decided to make an episode covering a little bit about 4 artworks from American history. I started with a piece from the people who were here before the Europeans. I discussed a transformation mask from the northwest coast. Specifically, I was looking at work from the Kwakawak. In this episode I also shared about Houdon's neoclassical statue of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson's foray into architecture with Monticello, and Jacob Lawrence's 60 panel collection, The Migration Series.Images of the works can be found on www.whoartedpodcast.com along with Fragonard's painting of The Swing which I mentioned to draw a contrast between neoclassical art and the Rococo movement which came before it.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

A few years prior to the immersive experiences, filmmakers brought Vincent van Gogh's paintings to life in a completely new and different way. In 2017, Loving Vincent was a film made of oil paintings.Today Vincent van Gogh is sort of the model we hold in our minds for a tortured artist. He saw little to no commercial success in his lifetime. He struggled with addiction and mental health. He lived on the fringes of society inspired by other artists and impoverishing himself in his drive to create. He was known to go without food at times because he was spending all of his money on paint. And now we can see his dramatic tale unfold through paint. A team of 125 artists from around the world produced 65,000 paintings to animate the film. Film and animation basically work off the principle that if you have a bunch of pictures played back really quickly it overwhelms the eye. The human eye can not process more than ten pictures or frames per second so it stops looking like a series of pictures and instead looks like one picture that is moving. For Loving Vincent, the artists created an oil painting on canvas for each of the 65,000 frames. They recreated some of his masterpieces telling the dramatic tale through his best known works, in his style and his preferred medium of oils. So how did they do all of this? Well, the storyboard for the movie included a number of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings. They recruited a team of 125 well-trained oil painters rather than traditional animators. A bit of the movie was made by rotoscoping which is a technique of basically drawing on top of a frame of film. Actors were filmed in front of a green screen. Editors made a composite shot replacing the green to put Vincent van Gogh’s paintings into the background. Now here is the tricky part. After the green screen and all that editing, they put every single frame of the film onto a canvas. It took six years, but they painted 65,000 frames on canvas. Today only about 1000 of the paintings remain because after a frame was painted and photographed for the film, they would typically re-use the canvas. Oil paints take a long time to dry so they would be able to make slight alterations to a wet painting for the next frame. It was a remarkable feat blending old and new media.You can see the trailer for Loving Vincent on YouTubeWho ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.Connect with me:Website | Twitter | Instagram | TiktokSupport the show:Merch from TeePublic | Make a DonationIf you have a fun fact you would like to share, please email it to whoartedpodcast@gmail.comAs 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

In 1979, after some modest success a Japanese video game company opened an office in America. They started off in New York but eventually moved to Seattle. They wanted to break into the new North American market, but the game sales were lackluster. The head of the American division tried to keep them afloat and asked for more talent to be sent over from Japan. Most people at the top were involved in other projects, but they were able to find a young artist who was willing to develop a new game. His name was Shigeru Miyamoto and while he had not yet created a videogame, he would go on to create the flagship game became the symbol of the company and really home gaming. In the early days the character was a carpenter named jumpman. Then one day the landlord for the American offices came in to yell about how the rent was late and the staff thought he looked like their character so they started referring to Jumpman by a new name. They called him Mario.My guest this week is Matthew Bliss, host of The Dead Drop, a podcast sharing the latest video game news. It publishes twice a week and you can find him at www.deaddroppod.comWho 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

In the 1400s, influencers couldn’t simply scout a location, arrange the perfect lighting and pull out their camera phone to snap dozens of pics testing different angles to find the perfect shot demonstrating how much better their curated life is than the lived experience of the rest of us plebeians. No back then, if someone wanted a picture to go along with their smug sense of superiority, they needed to hire a painter and in 1434, Jan van Eyck painted one of the greatest testaments to the enduring power of carefully constructing a casually posed portrait.There is a lot of debate about the meaning and symbolism in the work, but a common interpretation is that this is a sort of wedding scene. The man is taking the hand of his wife. She is in the interior of the space near the bed reinforcing the gender roles of the time with the woman’s place being taking care of the home while he stands by the open window symbolizing his role in the outside world. The mirror in the background is said to represent the eye of God witnessing their union and the frame of the circular mirror has a dozen small scenes from the passion of Christ. The small dog could be seen as a symbol of fidelity, or some say simply it is another signifier of wealth as many wealthy women were given lap dogs as companions. The green of the dress symbolizes hope. Many speculate the hope of becoming a mother and while many viewers today believe the woman in the portrait appears to be pregnant, as we all know, one should never assume a woman is pregnant. Scholars say this was actually a fashionable look for the day. Clothing was very expensive. Their clothing was particularly expensive with fur lining etc. The idea back then was the more clothing, the more wealthy one must be, so no matter how ridiculous the silhouette may appear to contemporary audiences, in the 15th century, those strange bulges of fabric showed that this was a person who could afford to dress themselves. It was conspicuous consumption proving yet again that for as long as we have had a means to record what people looked like, those people have worked to dress themselves up and surround themselves with markers of their high status. While some see modern mass media as producing a more vain and shallow culture, I would argue van Eyck shows us people have always been feeding their egos and flaunting their privilege with material goods. At least now most people know better than to use animal fur to do it.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