Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages

One of the things that really strikes me is that he is creating scenes of people being joyful. Adams says that part of the appeal of being an artist is getting to create the environments you would like to see and experience. I also think that there is something really nice about normalizing and even elevating fun and celebration. My guest this week was Goldie Robinson, an art teacher out of Atlanta. She was my guest on a previous episode about Alexander McQueen, and when I talked with her about coming back on the podcast, she suggested Derrick Adams. I am so glad she did because his work delivers some nice summer fun, but as with all great art, there is a ton more under the surface.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

I live in the United States where this weekend, people will be celebrating father’s day. I thought this would be great time to dedicate a mini episode to an artist who created a beautiful work for his father. I love MC Escher’s portrait of GA Escher not only because it shows us the Escher men had a strange proclivity for referring to humans by letters rather than names, but we see some similarities between the father and son as both wrote diligently in their journals throughout the process of its creation. This mini episode is about the portrait MC Escher lovingly created of his 92 year old father. He made 15 copies of the lithograph to be shared among the family.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

In 1964, Life Magazine ran with Lichtenstein on the cover and the text read “Is He the Worst Artist in the U.S.?” Lichtenstein responded to criticism of his work saying “I think my paintings are critically transformed, but it would be difficult to prove it by any rational line of argument." Seems like kind of a weak defense. Basically, ‘I think my work is good, but there’s really no rational argument in favor of it.’ I mean its a bold move. I’ll give him that.He painted Look Mickey after his son taunted him saying he couldn’t paint something that good. There is something I really love about the idea that basically his entire career was the ultimate “so there” to a child. I mean doing your work out of spite is one thing, but doing it to spite your child, that’s some next level pettiness.My guest this week was The Real Michael Lee, a musician, graphic designer and comic artist based out of Iowa. You can find him at www.therealmichaellee.com and or go to his links page to check out all the different spaces he occupies online.In this episode, we dropped a lot of names. Take a minute to look through my back catalog to learn more about Jack Kirby, Pablo Picasso's Guernica, Diego Rivera, Ernie Barnes and Andy Warhol.As I said in the show, feel free to leave a comment on the message boards at Goodpods, the platform with the good sense to feature Who ARTed on their recommendations list and where I am frequently ranked number 1 for visual arts.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

I have talked a bit about Daguerre and his photographic methods in a previous episode about the world’s first photobomb. Listeners may recall that the first photograph to feature a human happened by accident as Daguerre was taking a photograph of the view out his window. Those early photographs needed a long exposure. I’m talking around 15 minutes and few subjects could sit still for that long. This is why the first subjects of photos tended to be landscapes or still lives, you know, things that will be still for a long time. The plaster casts were a practical subject. They were also intended to send a message that photography was a new medium but it could handle the traditional subject matter. In this collection, we see an arrangement of casts of Venus, cupid, the wings, and heads of two cherubs. Above the cherub or putti heads which would have been associated with Phaethon son of Helios, we see the rams head, and the golden Ram in Greek mythology was a descendant of Helios, the sun god. Central to the composition, we see these references to Greek mythology making a connection between the new medium and classic subjects but more specifically, we are seeing references to the sun. When we break down photography, photo means light. Graphy is writing, The photographic process is making a picture with light. The sunlight triggers a chemical reaction causing silver compounds to darken.If you want to learn more about Daguerre and early photography, listen to my previous mini-episode about The World's First Photobomb.This week's Friday Follow recommendation is Art Ed Radio from The Art of Education University. This segment is not paid promotion. I simply want to share some of the things that I love. If you have a recommendation for something good I should check out, email me or reach out on social media.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

My guest this week is Janet Taylor, an artist and art teacher at the high school and college levels. Find her work and more about her at www.jatayolorart.comIn 1936, Meret Oppenheim was having lunch with friends when they began to joke about wrapping things in fur. She went back to her studio later and wrapped a cup, saucer, and spoon in fur thus creating what many consider to be the quintessential Surrealist sculpture, Object.Meret Oppenheim was a highly talented artist. She moved to Paris at age 18, and she was almost immediately recognized for her brilliance. Artists like Hans Arp and Alberto Giacometti invited her to participate in group shows, Object was inspired by her lunch conversation with Pablo Picasso, and Object was purchased by MoMA. Unfortunately, Oppenheim also struggled with depression and stepped out of the limelight for some period. For over a decade, focused on art conservation work to pay the bills, but ironically destroyed much of the art that she was creating in her own studio. When she did return to exhibiting her work with renewed confidence, her brilliance was again recognized. Although she is largely associated with the Surrealist movement, she also tackled issues of gender in a lot of her work. As she accepted an award from the city of Basel, she said, “I think it is the duty of a woman to lead a life that expresses her disbelief in the validity of the taboos that have been imposed upon her kind for thousands of years. Nobody will give you freedom; you have to take it.”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

In November of 1957, a small committee was formed. February 17, 1958, they held the first public meeting of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. That same year, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament asked the artist Gerald Holtom to create a symbol for the movement. The CND has been at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK and claims to be Europe’s biggest single-issue peace campaign. Holtom’s design though has become one of the most widely recognized symbols on the planet. I am talking of course of the peace sign. More than one peace sign exists. There is a hand gesture comprised of a thumb holding down the ring finger and pinky as the index and middle fingers are splayed to form a “v” In some bit of irony, that hand gesture started on the battlefields of World War II. Allied soldiers held up the gesture signaling “v for victory” and sometime later, anti-war protesters adopted the gesture as a peace sign. The universal symbol developed by Gerald Holtom though, is the other peace sign, the one consisting of a circle with a vertical line down the center and two diagonal lines forming an inverted v shape going from the center of the vertical line down to the bottom portion of the circle. Gerald Holtom made line drawings representing the flag semaphores of N and D for nuclear disarmament then put it into a circle to represent the globe and because let’s face it, the roundness looks nice.This week my FridayFollow Podcast Recomendation is Your Brain on Facts. Check it out at www.yourbrainonfacts.com or on your favorite podcast app.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

My guest this week is The Real Michael Lee, a musician, graphic designer, illustrator and comic enthusiast (find him and all his social media at bit.ly/heartrml) . We had a great talk about Jack Kirby, the legendary comic book artist who made contributions to both Marvel and DC among others. Kirby was responsible for the development of several notable characters including The Fantastic Four, Thor, Captain America, Black Panther, and for this episode, we focused on his illustration of The Avengers.At age 14, Jack Kirby enrolled in Pratt. He later said he wasn’t the kind of student Pratt was interested in. They wanted people to work on their projects forever. He didn’t want to work on anything forever - he wanted to get things done. Throughout his career, Kirby was noted to be very fast in his work. He would put out about 5 pages a day.Kirby basically was all over the scene in the golden age of comics. Companies were springing up and going under or morphing into other companies and it seems like he basically worked with, for, or helped create all of them. Jack Kirby experimented with things like romance comics for a more mature audience and I think that wasn’t really breaking any rules because the rules hadn’t even been established yet. His work showed generations of artists how to create compelling visualizations of epic yet relatable heroes.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

The Sun Stone is probably the first bit of Aztec art I became familiar with even before I studied art. It has been widely represented in various forms of culture from the relatively recent Mexican folk art tradition of Amate paintings to pop culture such as Legends of the Hidden Temple which I must confess was one of my favorite Nickelodeon game shows in the 90s. On its face, we see a beautiful image full of symbols laid out in radial symmetry that is just so visually satisfying, But as we look a little closer and get to know the symbols, this stone image is a lot deeper and heavier than I realized.The Aztec Sun Stone is also often referred to as the Calendar Stone, but it wasn’t intended to function in the way we use calendars today. The image is a representation of Aztec mythology describing five consecutive worlds of the sun all carved into the elaborate radial stone glyph. While the calendar stone was not used to mark the passing of days and months, it does have a date represented at the top. 13 Reed represents the start of the fifth and final sun, as well as the year that Itzcoatl began his rule thus legitimizing his rule with a link between the divine and man in the year 1427CEWhen the Sun Stone was discovered, it was flipped upside down. It is believed that the Aztecs may have flipped it upside down in order to prevent the final cataclysm, the fall of the fifth sun. Flipping the stone would have been no easy feat considering it is about 3 and a half meters wide, almost a meter thick and weighs in at 25 tons although I suppose people will do whatever they can to fend off the end of the world. Now putting this into a historical context, remember that this stone was created in the 15th century and the late 15th century is when Columbus and other European explorers began to make contact with the Americas. About 100 years after The Sun Stone was created, the Spanish conquistadors did effectively end the Aztec civilization so their apocalyptic notion of the 5th sun being the final really wasn’t so far off. While the sun didn’t fall to the earth, it was the end of their era.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

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.”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

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.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