Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages

For this week‘s episode, we focused on one of the most famous and influential Pop Artists of all time, Any Warhol. Andy Warhol was born, Any Warhola but later dropped the ‘a‘ because he loved mass production and tended to favor shortcuts, so I guess even his own name proved too much work. He said he dropped the name because his name was Czech and he thought Warhol was simpler. This change occurred right at the beginning of his career in 1949 as his first commissioned illustrations for Glamour Magazine was a collection of his shoe drawings and the art credits listed him as Andy Warhol. Andy loved mass media and used images found from newspapers and magazines as inspiration. He said he wanted to be a machine. He dubbed his studio ”The Factory” and he used methods to streamline and automate the creative process. He traced images for efficiency, he used screen printing to make it easier to copy his works for the repetitive series he was known for. While most printmakers work very carefully and meticulously to align their prints and ensure there will be no mistakes, Warhol actually celebrated to the flaws inherent in the printing process as it referenced the cheap tabloid feel he longed to create in so many of his works. While his work was often criticized as shallow and celebrating consumerism, he carefully thought about every aspect of his subjects and his process to create a deep and meaningful reflection of a culture that was largely shallow and fixated with throw away cultural icons. For this episode we looked at his zebra print which was a part of a series of 10 endangered species prints Warhol created in 1983. You can see the image at www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this fun fact Friday mini episode, I discuss the color purple. Purple has long been associated with royalty and that is largely because purple dyes have been hard to come by. The time consuming, labor and resource intensive process of producing purple dyes made them very expensive and thus only people of wealth and power could afford such finery. As always, you can find more to learn about on the website www.whoartedpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this episode, I spoke with Dr. Rosemary Lee an artist far more serious and accomplished than myself to gain some insights into the work of Bisa Butler. Specifically we talked about The Safety Patrol from 2018. For images, and more go to www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com Bisa Butler is a contemporary American artist. She was born and raised in New Jersey. She attended Howard University where her primary studio concentration was painting. Later on, she worked as an art teacher, but one of the most significant impacts on her personal and professional life came when she was pregnant. For health reasons, she gave up oils and solvents during her pregnancy but she could not give up on making art. When her grandmother got sick Butler wanted to make something for her. She found an old wedding photo of her grandparents, and used that image as inspiration for a quilt. Butler continued working making portraits on quilts. Her subjects include both famous and forgotten figures. A lot of her imagery comes from found photographs. She says she prefers black and white images as they allow her to be more creative in her selection of color. Bisa Butler uses an appliqué method layering colorful fabrics to make quilts that look like paintings. Her method actually starts off similar to how one might construct a large scale painting or drawing. She projects the image and draws out the shapes for the various color separations to capture the range of values needed. She then carefully selects fabrics in a variety of colors, textures and patterns to suit the subject and she cuts/stitches them together to form her image. Her portraits are life size bringing the viewer face to face with forgotten and overlooked people from history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a part of my series of fun fact Friday mini episodes about different colors. This week you can learn a bit about the history of different pigments used to create blue in artworks. For a long time, blue pigment was more valuable than gold. Blue pigments were so labor intensive and expensive that some prominent artists like Michelangelo were said to have left some paintings unfinished because they could not afford more blue paint. While we see blue all around us in the sky, the water, even people's eyes, blue pigments are relatively rare in nature. There is no blue pigment in people's eyes, just as the sky does not have blue pigment. Blue eyes, and the blue of the sky are just optical illusions produced by the shorter wavelengths of light scattering more readily through the gasses in earth's atmosphere or in the case of blue eyes, the way the light scatters through the fluid in the stroma of the iris. As always, you can find more at www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marcus Bromander is one of the co-creators and co-designers of the extremely popular game, Among Us. For this episode, I spoke with Jeff Arndt, a fellow art teacher, about Bromander and his work. Although Among Us is an online game, it was actually inspired by Bromander's love of a game he played with his friends in real life when he was growing up. The social aspects of gaming have become particularly important during the global pandemic making Among Us a perfect game for this time as it has allowed for people to maintain connection with friends while social distancing. As always you can learn a bit more at www.whoartedpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Remember the voting in round 1 of the Arts Madness tournament will begin Monday, March 1. Visit www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com for more information. This week's Fun Fact Friday mini episode is about the color green. Learn a little more about associations with the color green as well as sources of green in nature, in food and a surprising fact about green eyes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this week‘s episode I talked with Chuck Hoff about Joe Mills. Joe is an artist based out of Chicago and both Chuck and I were lucky enough to work with him years ago. Joe Mills was born in Kentucky but he came to Illinois for college. He studied industrial design at the University of Illinois and after college, he worked as a toy designer. A big turning point in his artistic development came when he moved to Australia in 2010. While in Australia, he missed his adopted home town of Chicago and he began creating work based on the city he loves. That Chicago themed work came to be his signature. Over the years he has captured many different subjects, but he focuses on his passions whether it is the city and the culture of communities around Chicago, or figures from pop culture. Mills creates work that is both meticulous and whimsical. He has the precision of an industrial designer combined with the creative and aesthetically pleasing style of a fine artist. For this episode we discussed his Chicago Factory piece to discuss. You can find the image and more at www.whoartedpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Voting for the Arts Madness tournament will begin March 1. Right now, you can check out all 64 artists and enter your prediction to win at www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com This week's fun fact Friday mini episode is all about the color yellow. The ancient Egyptians associated yellow with gold, and gold was symbolic of the gods and the eternal. Consequently, they used quite a bit of yellow to decorate their tombs. Of course just as with orange, the yellow pigment favored by the Egyptians contained arsenic so kind of ironic as a connection to immortality and yet perfect for the decoration of a tomb. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this episode I sat down with my good friend David Pittman to talk about the amazing work of Duff Goldman, the Ace of Cakes. Duff Goldman is a culinary artist well known for his incredible artistry with cakes. He is part baker, part sculptor, part painter but definitely one amazing artist. His actual name is Jeffery Goldman, but his brother mispronounced it as Duffy and the name stuck. Throughout his life, Duff moved around to different parts of the country: Michigan, Missouri, Massachusetts, California, Maryland but no matter where he was his love for cooking and his incredible work ethic remained constant. Because Duff is a celebrity baker it seemed only fitting that the episode focus on discussion of a piece from one of his shows, so we discussed the Bollywood inspired elephant cake from the competition between Duff and Buddy, another celebrity baker. As always you can find more at www.whoartedpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am continuing my fun fact series about colors. This episode is all about the color orange. I compiled a few fun facts about the color orange. For example, before the orange was brought to Europe in the 16th century, the color was simply referred to as yellow red. Orange has positive connections to warmth, energy and the divine all around the world. Orange pigment also has a long history of being highly toxic and it was only recently that artists shifted away from the use of chrome orange which was made with lead. As always you can find more resources to continue learning at www.whoartedpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Grant Wood was the American regionalist painter who rose to prominence almost overnight with his 1930 painting, American Gothic. In this episode, I spoke with Mike Divelbiss about Wood, his biography and his iconic work. Grant Wood was born in rural Iowa in 1891. His mother moved the family to the more urban Cedar Rapids in 1901 after his father passed away. Grant Wood showed a proclivity for the arts from an early age and after high school he pursued a broad based education at the Minneapolis Institute of Design and Handicraft. While he is best known today for his painting, Grant Wood worked in diverse media including functional art designing and building furniture as well as jewelry. In 1913, he moved to Chicago where he found work as a silversmith and eventually opened his own shop. During that time, he continued his education studying at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A few years later, he moved back to Iowa to help take care of his mother and he found work as an art teacher. While teaching art, he also served as the local jack of all trades artist. He was commissioned to make a stained glass piece honoring veterans of World War I in addition to building furniture, painting etc. In 1930, Grant Wood submitted American Gothic in an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. The piece was immediately popular and acquired by the museum. This elevated Wood‘s stature in the art world and opened opportunities for him such as teaching at the University of Iowa. He used his prominence to continue to do good in his community starting an artist colony, and during The Great Depression, he led the government jobs program overseeing artists painting murals around Iowa. American Gothic has been an interesting icon of American and particularly midwestern art for decades. In Iowa, there was an immediate backlash to the piece by people who felt it portrayed them in an unflattering light. Of course as years went on, in the grips of the depression, the painting came to be viewed more as portraying the strength and quiet dignity of working people. Personally I would argue that there is truth in both interpretations. I would argue that Grant Wood has a deep love and fondness for his subjects and his community, but infused his work with a little bit of the caustic humor that is typical of the culture. He is a bit playful with his work on some level making fun of some of the stiffness of some of conventions of the art world and what he viewed as the absurd and pretentious ”gothic” window on a small rural home (interesting fact, the window that Wood found so pretentious was actually functional and purchased from a Sears catalog) but simultaneously he has a deep love and affection for everyone and everything he is portraying in his work. You can find a picture of American Gothic linked here, and as always on the website www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last week I began a series of mini episodes exploring color. For this week's episode, I share some interesting bits about the color red. The color red is associated with both love and anger. While many mistakenly believe red will anger a bull, people looking at the color red have been known to experience an increase in their heart rate. Listen to this mini episode to find out a little more about the color red. If you enjoy the podcast, please like, subscribe and leave a review. Follow me on twitter @WoodArtEd and find more on the website www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Impressionist movement has been appealing to art lovers for about 150 years. While Claude Monet was not the sole inventor of the style, the movement was actually named after one of his paintings. Claude Monet was born in 1840. The 19th century brought us innovations that drastically changed how artists saw their role and their process. The advent of photography allowed artists to shift their focus away from use of paint as a means of recording what important people, places and things looked like. Artists started to shift their focus toward being more creative in their paintings focusing on color, and the expressive qualities that a camera could not capture. The tube of paint was also a 19th century invention. While it does not seem like such a big deal, the tube of paint made a wider range of hues available to artists and made those paints more portable. Monet and the Impressionists were well known to love painting outside. They stood in the landscape carefully capturing the colors as they saw them rather than staying in the studio painting from memory. While audiences today might look at paintings by Monet and other Impressionists as pleasant compositions that are fairly realistic, at the time, Impressionist paintings were revolutionary and viewed as scandalously sloppy when compared to the more traditional works that would have been seen in the Paris Salon. For this episode, we discussed one of Monet‘s water lilies paintings from what is perhaps his best known and most beloved series. Check out Water Lilies for 1906 at this link or on the website www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this week's mini episode, I wanted to take a little time to explain what color is and how we perceive color. This is going to be the first in a series of mini episodes about colors. I wanted to get some of the initial science out of the way before going into deeper dives about the histories and interesting facts behind individual colors and how artists have created those colors throughout history. As always, if you enjoy this episode, please like, subscribe and leave a review. For my fellow art teachers, I keep every episode clean and school appropriate so you can use this podcast as a resource to help your students explore art history. You can find images and free resources including a virtual gallery you can embed in your classroom site at www.whoartedpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Not a lot of great painters were also professional football players. Ernie Barnes was an American artist who grew up in the South during the Jim Crowe era. Despite the numerous challenges, he worked hard, her persisted and he succeeded. As a teenager, a coach mentored Barnes helping him to become captain of the football team and a state champion at shot put. He attended a historically black university on an athletic scholarship but he majored in art. After college, Barnes went on to play pro football, but the owner of the New York Jets saw that Ernie Barnes was more valuable applying his talents to the canvas rather than the field. In the 1960s, Barnes quickly started gaining critical acclaim. His first show in New York sold out. His paintings not only hung in galleries, but also in pop culture on album covers and perhaps most famously on the television series Good Times. For this episode, my good friend and fellow elementary art teacher, Chuck Hoff discussed the history, and the incredible artistry of Ernie Barnes. We referenced a few pieces, but primarily focused our analysis on his painting The American Dream. As always you can find the work being discussed and other resources on the website www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The art world is full of interesting characters. In so many ways, the artist‘s biography can be as important as their work. Nat Tate was an interesting character introduced to critics and tastemakers in 1998 when David Bowie hosted a dinner party to help launch a new book Nat Tate: Am American Artist 1928-1960. While the book has the sleepy title of a non-fiction book, it was actually a novel framed as a biography. Nat Tate was a tragic abstract expressionistic painter who destroyed 99% of his work before his untimely death. It was a compelling narrative of art and an artist lost to history. It was also pure fiction. While Bowie enlisted the help of a Picasso biographer to tell tales of Tate‘s interactions with Picasso, Braque and others, Nat Tate never existed. A week later, a journalist published a story of how important figures in the art world fell victim to this hoax. Oddly while Nat Tate was not real, there are real ”surviving” artworks attributed to him. In 2011, Sotheby‘s auctioned off a Nat Tate painting, Bridge No. 114, which sold for over 7000 pounds. As always you can see the work at www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I wanted to start 2021 with something fun, so I decided to do an episode about a classic episode of The Simpsons. In season 10 episode 19 titled Mom and Pop Art, Homer becomes an outsider artist. While much of the humor is derived from the premise that Homer Simpson is inept and could never be a decent artist, but I thought it would be fun to consider what kind of an artist Homer really is. His first sculpture was created accidentally from a failed attempt to build a backyard barbecue pit. After tastemakers declared the failed grill to be an artistic triumph, Homer leans in to his new career as an artist. Of course after the initial success that came so easily, Homer discovers that maintaining an art career is difficult as he presents a series of works that are considered too derivative of his earlier work as they all had the same feel behind them. This actually is one of the least true criticisms I observed in the satirical look at the art world. While in the Simpson‘s world art critics are fickle and looking to be constantly shocked, in reality one of the most sure paths to success is for an artist to develop a signature style so their work is easily identified to patrons. Consistency is crucial to an artist‘s marketability. Still Homer‘s falling out of favor led to a rare bit of introspection and growth for the character. Marge guides him through the museum and Homer applies his learning to creating one final masterpiece - The Grand Canals of Springfield. If you set aside the reckless destruction of property and the fact that such an act would have wreaked havoc endangering thousands of people and animals, it was actually a fairly interesting work. Ultimately, I consider Homer to be most interesting as a work of art rather than as an artist, but through any lens I find him delightful and thought provoking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a second mini episode recapping the takeaways from the artists covered thus far in season 2. In this episode, I share my takeaways from the episodes about Phil Hansen, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Charuvi Agrawal, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby. The second half of season 2 will start on Monday, January 18th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I will be taking a bit of a break. This week and next week will be the podcast equivalent of a clip show as I will rundown just the main takeaways I had from each artist I discussed throughout this season. In this episode I talked about the first five episodes which were about Marcel Duchamp, Burton Morris, Yayoi Kusama, Alexander Calder, and Barbara Kruger. Next week, I will run down the rest of the artists featured thus far. New episodes will be back in your feed starting Monday, January 18th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Few people know this, but Art used to be an Olympic event. Starting in the 1912 games, artists could win Olympic gold, silver and bronze medals in five categories of art. For more information and resources, check out the website www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com 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

Michelangelo is one of the most celebrated artists in history. He is known for having created some of the finest masterpieces in the world including the painting on the Sistine Chapel and the statue of David. As talented people become historical figures over the centuries, a lot of their humanity can be lost in historical accounts that feature only their highlights. I generally believe in giving people the generous edit and focusing on their good aspects, but going too far in mythologizing an artist or anyone else can be unhelpful. To focus only on their brilliance and ignore their struggles and shortcomings can be frustrating and cut short the growth of future generations of artists under the shadow of larger than life ”old masters.” With that in mind, I share that while Michelangelo‘s art was absolutely beautiful, the artist himself was kind of gross. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charuvi Agrawal is a contemporary artist from India. She is tremendously talented as a painter, sculptor and animator. She is probably best known for two incredible works based on Hanuman. Shortly after finishing her Masters in computer animation, she opened her own studio Charuvi Design Labs and spent 3 years developing a 3D animated film about Hanuman which gained widespread critical acclaim. Following that project, Agrawal created a jaw dropping sound sculpture, a 25 foot tall sculpture of Hanuman consisting of 26,000 hanging bells. As always you can find images of the work being discussed and more resources for art lovers and art teachers at www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this week‘s fun fact friday, learn about how Robert Rauschenberg created a famous work of art simply by erasing another artist‘s drawing. The piece is called ”Erased de Kooning Drawing” from 1953. This work is often misunderstood as an act of aggression or disrespect as Rauschenberg figuratively and quite literally erases Willem de Kooning‘s work, but actually this work was meant to be a celebration of de Kooning. Rauschenberg knew that the piece would only work if he were erasing a significant work by a great artist. De Kooning reluctantly agreed and gave a drawing for the younger artist to erase. Over the course of 2 months, Rauschenberg meticulously wore through numerous erasers until all that was left were a few smudges on an otherwise blank paper. Ultimately, we will never know what was originally on that paper, but de Kooning indicated it was a high quality piece and something he would miss. He felt that was important to the project. Now viewers are left to imagine what great drawing was once on that paper. The erased drawing creates an an absence or a loss that is somehow more empty than a new white page and in doing so it has elevated de Kooning‘s drawing to a space of legend freed from the page to now live inside the viewer‘s imagination. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jean-Michel Basquiat became a star of the art world in the 1980s. He grew up in New York and started making a name for himself through his collaborative graffiti project SAMO. In 1980, SAMO was dead and a young Basquiat was poised to take the art world by storm. His biography is the kind of story one would find hard to believe if laid out as the plot to a book or movie. He showed tremendous promise from an early age. He learned to read and write by the age of four. His mother nurtured his talents taking him to museums, providing him books to read to feed his appetite for more learning. Unfortunately, by his teenage years, while he was fluent in 3 languages, he was also struggling with his mother‘s mental illness and the need for her to be in care away from the family. He was a high school dropout and homeless in the late 1970s, but in the 1980s, he was painting in expensive Armani suits and throwing hundred dollar bills out of his limo to panhandlers on the street. In 2017, one of Basquiat‘s paintings set a record for the most expensive painting by an American artist when it sold for $110.5 million. In this episode of Who ARTed, we discuss the life and work of Jean-Michel Basquiat. As always you can find images of the work and other resources on the website www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com and if you like the podcast, please help spread the word, leave a review and all that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To be accurate, this one is a little more of a ”Fun Speculation Friday” as we will never know for a fact whether he had ADHD. He was not diagnosed in his lifetime and no credible diagnostician would pretend that they definitively prove someone had a disorder 500 years after they died. Still to consider him as an artist with a disability makes Leonardo da Vinci even more inspiring. Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most talented artist the world has ever known. He is frequently held up as the ideal ”Renaissance man” because of his notebooks full of scientific study, observations and plans for different inventions. The thing is, he never got around to editing, organizing or publishing those notes in order to help others learn and build off of his study. He never got around to building his machines. The majority of his work went unfinished. While many great artists from history created hundreds or thousands of works, Leonardo only appears to have completed a few dozen and he was notorious for taking absurdly long to do so. It took him over a decade to complete the Mona Lisa. He spent 3 years painting The Last Supper and he only finished that work after his patron threatened to cut off his funding. That distractibility and constant thirst for knowledge on a wide range of topics likely made him frustrating to work with, but it is also what made him brilliant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pablo Picasso is arguable one of the most talented and influential artists of the 20th century. He is certainly one of the most famous and successful. The name Picasso has become synonymous with artistic greatness, but the reality is not always quite as great as the myth. For all of his undeniable skill and talent, Pablo Picasso was a deeply flawed human being. His legacy is tarnished to some extent by his terrible treatment of women and his own family. I was hesitant to do an episode on Picasso for a long time because I generally want this podcast to have a positive tone and focus primarily on the better aspects of art. I tried to cover a bit of his artistic legacy and brilliance while acknowledging but not getting overly bogged down in the depressing details of his personal shortcomings. For this episode we focused on Guernica from 1937. It was Picasso‘s massive painting created as a response to the horrific violence of the bombing of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The German Nazis and Italian fascists were involved in the Spanish Civil War and Picasso painted Guernica at the request of Spanish Nationalists. He exhibited the painting at the Paris International Exhibition at the Spanish Pavilion. Nazi Germany had a huge pavilion at the same exhibition which had to make things a little awkward. Guernica was exhibited in other venues throughout the world to raise money for Spanish war relief and to convey his antiwar/anti violence political stance. As always, you can find the image linked within the show notes or look on the website www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com where fellow art teachers can also find numerous resources that can be helpful in the classroom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 the 4th century BCE in China, while photography didn‘t really come about until the 18th Century. In the early 19th century, Louis Daguerre was working hard to improve the photographic method. His innovations helping to develop a latent image drastically cut down on exposure times making photography much more practical. Of course while I say it drastically cut down exposure times, it cut the times down from hours to minutes, but it was still too long to be practical for most people to be captured in a photo. The first photograph of people actually happened by accident as one man‘s decision to get his shoes shined in 1838 led to his likeness being captured in an image that would make history. For images and more resources, check out www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian artist and art theorist. He is known as one of the early pioneers of abstract art. Learn a bit about Kandinsky‘s background, his personal journey from a teacher of Law and Economics to one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Wassily Kandinsky is said to have had a condition known as synesthesia in which sound and color were linked sensory experiences. As a child he described hearing the paint his as he mixed colors. As an adult, he spoke of visual arts in musical terms. We discussed his unique vision as expressed in the piece Yellow Red Blue, 1925. Who ARTed is an art history podcast for all ages. Kyle Wood has been teaching elementary art for well over a decade helping to break things down and explain art history in a way that listeners of any age can understand and appreciate. For more information and resources of particular interest to fellow art teachers, check out the website www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this week‘s Fun Fact Friday, I wanted to share a little bit about the Primary Colors. In Art class, we are traditionally taught that all the colors we see are a combination of just red, yellow and blue. This is true to some extent, but teaching that there are just three primary colors and that you can make any color you want using red, yellow and blue gives people an incomplete picture. The fact is there are actually different sets of primary colors depending on what colored medium one is working with. Also, if we are being technically accurate, whether using additive or subtractive color the optimal primaries are not red, yellow and blue. If you enjoy this podcast, please like subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you are listening. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For images and resources, go to www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com For this week's episode I spoke with Kelly Beach about the contemporary American artist, Phil Hansen. The specific work being discussed was Hansen's piece Cobain, from his Goodbye Art 2 series. Hansen's work focuses largely on the creative process and overcoming obstacles. Hansen himself struggled with a tremor that hindered his artistic career until he learned to "embrace the shake" and change his methods, change his mindset and opened up a whole new world of possibilities. If you enjoy the podcast, please like, subscribe, leave a review and help spread the word. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For more information and resources, go to www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com Pablo Picasso is credited with numerous quotes including, "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." Interestingly, he may have stolen that idea from T.S. Elliot. It is not entirely clear whether Picasso ever did actually say the oft quoted line, but Elliot is definitely documented to have said "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different." The quote is not the only instance of Picasso's questionable practices with regard to other people's property whether physical or intellectual. Diego Rivera accused Picasso of plagiarizing his work. The police even suspected Picasso of stealing The Mona Lisa in 1911, and while he did not take Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, Picasso was in possession of other art stolen from the Louvre. If you enjoy the Who ARTed Podcast, please like, subscribe, leave a review and help spread the word of this thoroughly adequate podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For images and more to explore, go to www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com For this episode, we talked about the Barabara Kruger. She is known for her collages using text often on top of found images in a way that confronts the viewer raising questions about the conduct of our culture. Her work is often political without being prescriptive. She raises questions and poses problems for the viewer to think about, but often leaves it to the viewer to make up his or her mind about the issue. In this episode, we talked about the popular piece, Don't be a Jerk, which was first made early in her career, but she was commissioned by MoMA to make another version of it in 1996, and in 2017 it was printed on skateboard decks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As always you can find more information and resources on my website WhoARTedPodcast.com I thought it would be fun to do a bonus episode this Halloween focusing on the artistry behind the spooky, fun Lego Hidden Side collection. For those who are unfamiliar, the Hidden Side is Lego's augmented reality theme with delightful transformational elements. The sets focus on the paranormal and there are physical manifestations of hauntings in the real world play with the sets as well as a free app allowing players to can the set with their phone and hunt for ghosts or be a ghost haunting the town. It is a delightful combination of multiple artistic disciplines as sculptors, graphic designers, writers, animators all worked to create a masterful collection that engages the audience on multiple levels in the real and virtual worlds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For more information and resources check my website www.WhoARTedPodcast.com This week's fun fact Friday episode focuses on Scheele's green which was a popular green pigment in the victorian era. Unfortunately, while the green was beautiful, it was also deadly because Scheele's green was derived from arsenic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As always you can find a picture of the work and more at www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com For this week's episode we learn a bit about Alexander Calder, the mechanical engineer who became a pioneer of kinetic sculpture. The specific work we looked at in this episode is Streetcar from 1951. It is one of many mobiles Calder created over his career. While he did have other amazing work including his wire sculptures that are just masterfully created drawings in air, as well as toys, jewelry, stabile sculptures, set designs and more, he is best known for his mobiles so we used a piece representative of his most famous innovation when discussing the artist and his legacy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As always, you can find pictures and more information at www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com For this week's fun fact friday, you can learn about everyone's first and favorite modular building material Lego, and how in 2009 on man (with the help of corporate sponsors and a few thousand volunteers) built a livable house out of Lego complete with working plumbing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To see the work discussed in this episode, visit www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com Yayoi Kusama is among the most popular contemporary artists. In addition to her beautiful paintings, Kusama makes installations, sculptures, poetry, fashion. She has done a bit of everything in the art world and audiences have loved her work for decades. Her infinity room installations are particularly popular as the mirrored rooms create a sensation of a space that extends forever. For this episode, the specific work discussed was her installation, Love is Calling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For more information and resources you can visit www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com In this minisode, we learn about some of the petty behavior of "sophisticated" artists. Anish Kapoor has the exclusive rights to use vantablack, the world's blackest black, for artistic purposes. Many in the art world found it infuriating that someone in a creative field would stop others from accessing materials thus stifling innovation. Some were more bothered by the uninspired ways that Kapoor squandered this material. Stuart Semple fought back in was that are in some ways petty, but always amusing. Learn a bit about their feud in this episode, and if you want to learn more about Semple, purchase some of his pigments, or participate in #Pinktober visit his website Culture Hustle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Go to www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com to see the work being discussed. This week we talked about the American Pop Art painter, Burton Morris. His work has gained quite a bit of notoriety as it was featured on the hit NBC sitcom Friends. In this episode we discuss a bit about his background, his style and we do a closer look at his nightstand portrait of Andy Warhol. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This season I thought it would be nice to do a series of minisodes on Fridays. The Fun Fact Friday series will consist of short episodes with little anecdotes about art history and interesting connections to science. This week's Fun Fact is that the ROY G BIV model of a rainbow is somewhat arbitrary. The only reason people slip indigo between blue and violet is because Sir Isaac Newton wanted to have seven colors in order to match the musical scale. As always you can find more information and resources at www.whoartedpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For pictures of the works being discussed, go to www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com For Season 2, I decided to start by taking a deep dive into Fountain from 1917. Marcel Duchamp started his career as a painter, but his greatest legacy is the readymade which caused artists, critics and audiences to question what art is, what it could be and opened the door to all sorts of innovations for generations of artists who followed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I met with my friend Jeff Arndt, the art teacher at Ranch View Elementary, and we decided to record a quick episode while we were setting up an art show at city hall. For this episode we discussed Jen Stark and her piece Inside Out from 2014. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this episode, I thought it would be fun to do something a little different. We looked at the work of OK Go, specifically their video for The One Moment. It serves as a fun and accessible piece to start to break down how an audience can make sense of performance art. You can see their video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvW61K2s0tA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode I spoke with Mrs. Pradel about Bobbi Cyr, a local artist known for her paintings and prints featuring hand lettering. Click here to see the specific piece we discussed in the episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every episode explores a different artist/work first with a discussion of the context, then looking at one specific piece and finally we share our takeaways to further one's own artistic practice. In this episode we looked at the Swedish painter, Carl Larsson and his watercolor The Kitchen from 1898. Click here to view the work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, I talked with Rita Woker about Diego Velazquez and his masterpiece, Las Meninas. It was a great privilege to learn from Woker's insights as a person who has seen the work first hand in Spain and her ability to share not only what she knows of the piece from her research, but the experience of seeing such a monumental painting. Click here to see Las Meninas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode shares the 10 bits of advice I would pass on based on what I have learned over the course of the first ten episodes. Click here to view the collection of works discussed throughout the first half of the season and reviewed in this episode. I will be taking a short break and returning with ten more episodes to finish the season starting on Thursday February 6. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this episode, we discussed Frida Kahlo and her Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird from 1940. In each episode, we have 3 segments: In Situ where we discuss the context and biographical information, In Gallery where we discuss one specific piece and finally In Studio where we share our takeaways and advice for artists to apply to their own work based on what we learned from this artist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this episode, we discussed Leonardo da Vinci, the artist known to embody the Renaissance ideal of study and mastery of diverse topics. First we discussed the historical context and a little bit about his biography, then for our In Gallery segment, we discussed one of Leonardo's most famous masterpieces, The Mona Lisa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices