Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages

Basquiat as the artist himself was like tofu, able to soak up and take on so many different flavors. Middle class child, homeless teen, bankable star of the art world. He was a graffiti artist selling postcards on the street, celebrated painter wearing armani suits to work in his studio. Basquiat inhabited so many different worlds, people can pick the story that resonates with them because as Basq...

Njideka Akunyili Crosby is a Nigerian-born artist who moved to America as a teen and her work Predecessors looks at how her family has changed over generations. She uses painting and collage techniques to share her memories and connect different aspects of her identity as she has roots in both Nigeria and America. If you want to learn more, check out the full episode I recorded with Janet Taylor,...

Cezanne is widely celebrated today, but he struggled early on. He was rejected by Beaux Arts multiple times. He went back home to work at the bank for a while but he felt compelled to pursue the arts and he persisted. He met other artists like Renoir and Monet who had also been rejected by academic establishment and many critics of the day. The supported each other and learned from each other. In...

Season 6 is covering the artists in this year's Arts Madness Tournament. I will be releasing 64 mini episodes in 64 days to give you a quick refresher on all the different artists and artworks in the tournament. By the 1960s Roy Lichtenstein was intrigued by the ideas of pop art and began dabbling in the style. Of course, if you want fresh new ideas, the best source is often the younger generation...

I am releasing a mini episode every day in the run up to this year's Arts Madness Tournament to give you a quick refresher on all 64 artists/artworks. In this mini episode, I covered Christian Dior and The New Look from 1947. If you want to learn more, you can listen to the full episode I recorded back in October with Cassie Stephens Christian Dior | Bar Arts Madness Tournament links: Check out th...

The Eiffel Tower was by far the largest structure built for the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris. Eiffel was an entrepreneur and he had two engineers working with him to plan the iron tower, but not everyone was on board with the design. Audiences today may be surprised to hear that many Parisians thought the design was an eyesore and a blight on their beautiful city. The architect Stephen Sauvestre was...

Season 6 is all about the annual Arts Madness Tournament. I am releasing 64 mini episodes over 64 days to give you all a quick refresher on the diverse artists that will be up for consideration as we narrow the field down to just one ultimate Arts Madness Champion. To make it more fun, I will be using my ad revenue from the month of February to give out some prizes, so tell your friends about the...

Get ready for this year's Arts Madness Tournament with a quick refresher on Salvador Dali. Season 6 of Who ARTed will have 64 mini episodes over the next 64 days to help you learn about all the artists/artworks listeners can vote on in this year's tournament. 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...

Today I want to talk to you about a few things. First off, as it is Friday, I want to share a fun fact about one of my absolute favorite artists, Keith Haring. One of his most famous and popular images, the three eyed smiley face came about by accident. In October 1981, Haring was invited to paint directly on the wall of the Annina Nosei Gallery. He was participating in a group show of Neo Express...

Zaria Forman is known for her pastel drawings documenting the environment and climate change. The thing is, her work is so much bigger than that statement would lead you to believe. Her works are not your average pastel drawings. First off, they are massive. They are of a size that forces you to stop and take notice. The choice of soft pastels is fitting as these drawings, much like the environmen...

While many artists took inspiration from all types of flowers Vincent van Gogh became closely associated with one type in particular. While he did color studies using several types of flowers, he loved the sunflowers. Vincent wanted to be known as the painter of sunflowers. The man and the flower became so closely associated that at his funeral many friends paid their respects bringing sunflowers...

Andrew Fuller first earned viral fame with a pie that appeared to have a human face in it. He has appeared on a few shows: Halloween Baking Championship (2018), Candy Land (2020) but the Netflix hit baking competition show, Is it Cake? really catapulted him to the next level. On this episode, I talked with Nathan Ragland, host of Post Modern Art Podcast about Fuller and his mindblowing, hyperreali...

The Buddhist monks of Tibet who are known for their tradition of sand mandalas destroy the work after completing it. The word mandala comes from Sanskrit meaning “circle” but a mandala is not your average two-dimensional shape consisting of an outer boundary called the circumference made up of points all equidistant from a fixed center point. A mandala representation of the universe. While many pe...

Jean-Michel Basquiat has created some of the most highly valued American paintings ever to go on auction. Basquiat sought to remake art history in his image, and I would say he was successful. His triptych, Horn Players, is one of the artworks required for the AP Art History curriculum studied by American high school students. In the middle of February 1981, a group exhibition opened at P.S.1 in N...

Piet Mondrian is best known for painting primary colored squares and rectangles. For this episode, fellow art teacher, Jeff Arndt and I talked about the big ideas that led Mondrian to make such simple work. He pushed the ideas of modern abstract art farther than anyone else. Mondrian limited himself to basic elements of simple lines, shapes and colors to focus on the principles of design like bala...

Dancing at the Louvre is part of Faith Ringgold's series of 12 story quilts called The French Collection and it is on the AP Art History list (it is one of 250 artworks American high school students study for AP Art History courses, which give them the chance to earn college credit). In her Dancing at the Louvre quilt, Ringgold is writing the story of Willa Marie Simone, a fictional character that...

I am sick with Covid and with the ups and downs of the illness, I wasn't sure when I would be up for recording this week. Consequently, I made this a mini episode with no guest, which is fine because it is on a topic that pretty much no guest wants to talk about anyways, JMW Turner's painting, The Slave Ship. Just as a side note, while I am mildly miserable at times, my experience of Covid would b...

I was asked to create an episode about how art affects the brain. I found there is quite a bit of research conducted by neuroscientists around the world indicating that engaging with the arts makes people smarter, happier, and healthier. Let me know what you think of this episode. Do you want to hear more like this? Are there other topics you want me to cover? Email whoartedpodcast@gmail.com Who A...

Nick Cave is a contemporary artist whose work is part fashion, part sculpture, part performance and entirely fascinating. For this episode, I spoke with Kaitlyn and Corbie, fellow art teachers and hosts of the podcast Those Art Teachers. You can find Those Art Teaches on your favorite podcast platforms such as Apple Podcasts (remember leaving them a rating/review really helps podcasts become more...

Georges Seurat | A Sunday on La Grande Jatte In 1894, George Seurat began going out to an idyllic little island away from the urban center of Paris. It was a place where people of various classes would relax. While the image is of people at leisure, Seurat was anything but relaxed. He was a disciplined artist on a mission to create a work that would be significant in art history. He spent years de...

Today I am giving you an episode of another art history podcast. The show is called Art of History. It is hosted by Amanda Matta, who is everyone’s favorite TikTok royal commentator and just generally smarter than me. Art of History is another Airwave Media podcast, and she is absolutely killing it. If you listened to my episode on Fragonard’s The Swing, you may recall, I did about 5-10 minutes on...

In 1991, Marvel became the first comic book company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The newspapers declared “Spider-Man is coming to Wall Street.” It seems a bit unlikely that a character that’s part nerdy teen and part bug would become the face of the company and one of the most iconic figures in comic book history. Of course, everyone loves a good underdog story so for this mini episode,...

This week, my guest is the one and only Cassie Stephens. She is an amazing art teacher well known for her unique style and wonderful lessons in all media. Find her books, podcast, lesson plans, and more on her website. Our subject for this episode is Christian Dior. Dior was an influential designer in the mid 20th century. He made a splash in the design world when he introduced "The New Look" in h...

Today's fan pick episode is about Ivan Albright.  Ivan Albright is considered to be a great macabre painter. He is known for his portraits and still lives that have a sense of rot showing the frailty of life. His style is considered magical realism. He meticulously rendered portraits that were unlike anything else in his day. In this episode, we discussed the painting he created for the film adapt...

Fans voted Louis Daguerre as one of the most popular subjects covered in 3 years of Who ARTed, so I made a mashup of my two mini-episodes about Daguerre and the early days of photography. The history of photography has some really interesting and surprising facts. For example, the camera is about 2000 years older than photography. The earliest known camera obscuras were documented as far back as t...