Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages

Georgia O'Keeffe was one of the greatest American painters of the 20th century.  Arts Madness Tournament links: Check out the Brackets Tell me which artist you think will win this year's tournament Give a shoutout to your favorite teacher (the teacher who gets the most shoutouts on this form by Feb 27 will get a $50 Amazon gift card) Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast. Connect with me: Website...

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 Mon...

Johannes Vermeer is best known today for painting The Girl with the Pearl Earring. Part of the allure of this painting is the pose, she seems a little caught off guard looking over her shoulder at the viewer.  Or maybe she is turning away from the viewer. The pose has a little bit of ambiguity and the painting is rendered so beautifully that many refer to The Girl with the Pearl Earring as the Mon...

Recently a team completed a 717 gigapixel image of Rembrandt's painting, The Night Watch. Learn a little bit more about this famous piece that has been called by the wrong name for hundreds of years as it actually took place in the daytime.  Check out the ultra high resolution photo Arts Madness Tournament links: Check out the Brackets Tell me which artist you think will win this year's tournament...

Chuck Close said when a problem seems overwhelming, you should break it down into smaller pieces. To tackle the photorealistic faces, Chuck Close would use a grid. He broke the image down into sections allowing him to focus on the lines, shapes, and proportions one little bit at a time. In his early works, he would erase the grid as he painted, but as he matured, he chose to lean into the grid. He...

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 th...

Burton Morris is a contemporary Pop Art painter whose work was featured in the sitcom Friends. His work got a starring role after a camera operator on the show wore a Burton Morris t-shirt on set. David Schwimmer, one of the lead actors in the show saw the shirt and borrowed it to wear in a scene. After that, Morris got in touch with the show's creator and his paintings were featured in the backgr...

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 f...

In December 1894, Alphonse Mucha just happened to be in the print shop checking some proofs for a friend, when in walked an actress, Sarah Bernhardt in need of posters for her upcoming play. All of the regular artists she worked with were off for the holidays leaving Mucha as her only option. It was a tremendous stroke of luck for both of them as Mucha created a stunning poster that not only flatt...

Marcel Duchamp liked to portray himself as a rebel and an outsider courting controversy. While he was bold and pushing boundaries, he also came from a family of artists and he served as an advisor to the likes of Peggy Guggenheim and MoMA. Two of Duchamp's best known pieces were Nude Descending a Staircase 2 and Fountain. Arts Madness Tournament links: Check out the Brackets Tell me which artist y...

Jan van Eyck was a remarkable painter. He worked in oils during the Renaissance, and created stunning photorealistic portraits centuries before photography was developmed. In the Arnolfini portrait, he captures not only the subjects standing before him, but also a reflection of the room in a convex mirror showing the full scene and accurately rendering the distortions caused by the curved glass. A...

In 1896, Louis Sullivan wrote about skyscrapers and architectural design in “The Tall Building Artistically Considered” This was the origin of the famous phrase, “form follows function.” What Sullivan actually said was “form must ever follow function” but regardless of phrasing, the meaning remains the same - architects should first consider how a building will be used then base the design on that...

Charuvi Agrawal made a name for herself with a stunning computer-animated film about Hanuman. In 2014, she grabbed more headlines as she created a record-setting 25-foot tall monumental work comprised of 26,000 bells. Arts Madness Tournament links: Check out the Brackets Tell me which artist you think will win this year's tournament Give a shoutout to your favorite teacher (the teacher who gets th...

Frida Kahlo was a painter in the early 20th century associated with the Surrealist movement. While she had some moderate success as a painter during her lifetime, her fame grew in the decades after her passing. Today she is among the most popular figures in art history. She is best known for her self-portraits that give viewers a sense of her pain but more importantly, her strength. Arts Madness T...

When you think of bold and revolutionary modern artists from the 20th century, you probably don't think of a grandmother laying across her living room floor painting, but maybe you should. Janet Sobel was a Ukrainian American painter who was dripping paint across the canvas long before Jackson Pollock "invented" the technique. More episodes to explore: Art Smart: Surrealism Art Smart: Abstract Exp...

Alexander McQueen quickly rose to prominence in the 1990s with his dramatic looks that were impeccably tailored. He is one of 64 artists selected for this year's Arts Madness Tournament where listeners will decide which artist is better in a series of head to head matches until just one is left. Listen to the full episode to learn more: Alexander McQueen | Jellyfish Ensemble Arts Madness Tournamen...

Jim Davis is famous for creating Garfield. He was born and raised in Indiana. As a child he wanted to be a farmer like his father, but found that he was much better suited to indoor life. He found his love of drawing early in life and developed his talents first in school, then working in advertising and assisting in the Tumbleweeds comic. Davis's first comic, Gnorm Gnat, was a bit of a flop. Peop...

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 Arts Madness Tournament links: Check out the Brackets Tell me which artist you think will win this year's tournament Give...

Pablo Picasso was among the most influential artists of the 20th century and Guernica is possibly his greatest work. While I am not a fan of Picasso as a person, his significance as an artist is undeniable. More to check out: The Art of Education University's NOW Conference Pablo Picasso Art Thief? Art Smart: Cubism Arts Madness Tournament links: Check out the Brackets Tell me which artist you thi...

In 1936, Meret Oppenheim sat down in a cafe with Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar. Picasso took note of Oppenheim's bracelet and commented that anything could be wrapped in fur. Meret replied "even this tea cup" and thus found inspiration for one of the greatest Surrealist sculptures of all time. Other episodes for to explore: Meret Oppenheim | Object (full episode featuring Janet Taylor from The Art o...

MC Escher is known for his tessellations, transformations and impossible realities. In many ways he defies categorization. His work is surreal with unexpected connections, but also very geometric and academic. Unfortunately, Escher was not super popular in the fine art world. A lot of the high-brow art establishment didn’t really like his work. He didn’t have the dramatic flair that a lot of well-...

Barbara Kruger is a contemporary artist well known for her use of text and images. She started off in the late 1960s and 70s creating work reclaiming "craft" as a part of the feminist movement using materials that had long been marginalized. After she went to teach at UC Berkley, she started to gravitate toward words. In the late 1970s, she self published a book juxtaposing text and images. She wo...

Claude Monet loved his garden and made about 250 paintings of water lilies. He and his Impressionist contemporaries were focused on color, light, and how our eyes perceive the world, but I would say technology was also central to the development. In his paintings of the train station, The Gare Saint Lazare, Monet gives us a glimpse of iron and glass station filled with the smoke of the steam engin...

The Sun Stone is probably the first bit of Aztec art I became familiar with even before I studied art. 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. Arts Madness Tournament links: Check out the Brackets Te...

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 Arts Madness Tournament links: Check out the Brackets Tell me which artist you think wi...