Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages
Episodes
Arts Madness and a Fun Forgery Story
15 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week we are wrapping up Round 3 of Arts Madness 2024. The matches are very close. Last week, Emily Kame Kngwarreye beat Keith Haring by a single ...
Margaret Shepherd | Learn American Calligraphy
11 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week I interviewed Margaret Shepherd, a calligraphy artist and author. She has written several books, but her latest is Learning American Calligr...
The Rubik's Cube | Work of Art and an Art Medium
08 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Rubik's Cube is a fun puzzle toy, but some have begun looking at it as a medium to create pixelated masterpieces. Learn a little bit about Erno Ru...
Artist Interview | Herb Williams
04 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Herb Williams is an incredibly talented sculptor bringing crayons to a whole new dimension. I sat down to talk to Williams about his background, his a...
Quick Announcements & The Unbelievable Story of Han van Meegeren
01 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The late 1930s were a rough time in Europe. Nazis were on the rise, and museums began hiding their most treasured works or even shipping them off to s...
Keith Haring | DJ Dog (encore)
29 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Keith Haring is one of my absolute favorite artists because he was earnest and direct in his paintings. In his works, he would reduce complicated mess...
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec | At The Moulin Rouge
28 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec was associated with the Moulin Rouge since it first opened in 1891. He was captivated by the unique spirit of the club where...
Gustave Eiffel | The Eiffel Tower
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 work...
Salvador Dali | The Persistence of Memory (encore)
26 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Salvador Dali's most famous painting is The Persistence of Memory from 1931. The painting is surprisingly small just 9 ½ by 13 inches or slightly la...
Jean-Honore Fragonard | The Swing
25 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jean-Honore Fragonard’s painting, The Swing is one of those rare pieces that feels so immediately accessible it has begun to make the leap from the ...
Johannes Vermeer | Woman Holding a Balance
24 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Vermeer created stunning works and he is widely celebrated as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. This painting, Woman Holding a Bal...
Kwakwaka’wakw artist | Eagle Transformation Mask
23 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The transformation mask is a carved and painted sculpture, a status symbol, a costume element and a simple machine all at once. Pulling the strings on...
Auguste Rodin | The Burghers of Calais
22 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today's mini-episode is about Auguste Rodin and his sculpture of The Burghers of Calais. The story behind the piece is an inspiring tale that defines ...
Robert Smithson | Spiral Jetty
21 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On the peninsula at Rozel Point on Utah’s Great Salt Lake, Smithson created his most famous monumental sculpture using over six thousand tons of bla...
Vincent van Gogh | The Starry Night
20 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Jean-Antoine Houdon | George Washington
19 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jean-Antoine Houdon was one of the greatest neoclassical sculptors in the late 18th century. Shortly after the American Revolution, the governor of Vi...
Piet Mondrian | Composition with Red Blue and Yellow
18 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Piet Mondrian is best known for painting primary colored squares and rectangles. For this episode, fellow art teacher, Jeff Arndt and I talked about t...
Rachel Ruysch | Fruit and Insects
17 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rachel Ruysch was an incredibly skilled Dutch painter in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. She was renowned for her still lives. The objects in ...
Diego Velazquez | Las Meninas
16 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Diego Velazques was one of the most significant painters of Spain's Golden Age in the 17th century. He was a master of both portraiture and genre pain...
Faith Ringgold | Dancing at the Louvre
15 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Maria and Julian Martinez | Black on Black Pottery
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Maria Martinez belonged to the Tewa-speaking Pueblo people, known for their rich artistic heritage. Pottery-making was deeply rooted in Puebloan cultu...
Helen Frankenthaler | The Bay
13 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Bay was painted in 1963 as Frankenthaler had refined her soak and stain process. While Mountains and Sea was made with diluted oil paints, The Bay...
Thomas Jefferson | Monticello
12 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Jefferson may be a surprising person to find in an art history podcast, but the writer of the Declaration of Independence, third president of t...
Jean-Michel Basquiat | Horn Players
11 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
JMW Turner | The Slave Ship
10 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Turner's painting of The Slave Ship from 1840 was originally titled "Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying" and the event that inspired this w...
Raphael | The School of Athens
09 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 archi...
Michelangelo | The Sistine Chapel Ceiling (mini)
08 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Leonardo da Vinci | The Last Supper
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous works is not housed in a museum. It is in the Convent of Santa Maria in Milan Italy. It seems totally fitting fo...
Donatello | David
06 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Donatello’s statue of David, just like the story, seems straightforward and simple at first glance, but with great art, there is always more than me...
Emily Kame Kngwarreye | Earth's Creation
05 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Emily Kame Kngwarreye was born around 1910, a time when the Aboriginal people were not considered full citizens in their own country. Earth’s Creati...
Jan van Eyck | The Arnolfini Portrait
04 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jan van Eyck was a remarkable painter. He worked in oils during the Renaissance, and created stunning photorealistic portraits centuries before photog...
Xu Bing | A Book from the Sky
03 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Skipping ahead a few hundred years, the artist Xu Bing created Book from the Sky as a monumental print. It is probably among the most ambitious, labor...
Frank Gehry | Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain
02 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Modernists said, “form follows function” focusing on how people will use a space, but Gehry focuses on how people will react to the space. His goa...
Louis Sullivan | Carson Pirie Scott Building
01 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1896, Louis Sullivan wrote about skyscrapers and architectural design in “The Tall Building Artistically Considered” This was the origin of the...
Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun | Self-Portrait
31 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1778, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun met Marie Antoinette at the Royal palace in Versailles. The queen had heard of Le Brun’s talent and asked to paint...
Frank Lloyd Wright | Falling Water
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Lloyd Wright was one of America's most famous and influential architects. He famously said, "No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. I...
Jacob Lawrence | The Migration Series
29 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series was not his only narrative series of paintings, but it was his biggest hit. This collection of 60 painted panels tel...
Christo and Jeanne Claude | The Gates
28 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Christo and Jeanne Claude are best known for their monumental works using fabric to transform public spaces. These massive works outside of the museum...
Ai Weiwei | Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds)
27 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ai Weiwei is possibly the most interesting man in the world. He is not only a famous contemporary artist. He was a top rated blackjack player, a polit...
Pablo Picasso | Guernica
26 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Andy Warhol | Marilyn Diptych
25 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this portrait, Andy Warhol presented Marilyn Monroe in the format typically associated with religious artworks. This work was created just a few we...
Katsushika Hokusai | The Great Wave off Kanagawa
24 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Katsushika Hokusai is best known for The Great Wave off Kanagawa, part of his series of 36 Views of Mount Fuji. His family was in the mirror business,...
Wassily Kandinsky
23 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Wassily Kandinsky was an artist, teacher and art theorist in the early 20th century. His work was very influential in the development of modern, abstr...
Benin Bronzes | Equestrian Oba and Attendants
22 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Benin Bronzes, a collection of exquisite brass and bronze sculptures originating from the Kingdom of Benin (present-day Nigeria), stand as a testa...
Marcel Duchamp | Fountain
21 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Meret Oppenheim | Object (Luncheon in Fur)
20 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 co...
Henri Matisse | Goldfish
19 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Henri Matisse was born in Northern France on December 31, 1869. His father was a successful grain merchant. In 1887, Henri was well on his way to a su...
Yayoi Kusama | Narcissus Garden
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Yayoi Kusama is one of the most popular contemporary artists with her infinity rooms drawing massive crowds wherever they are installed. In the infini...
Claude Monet | The Gare Saint-Lazare
17 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Claude Monet loved his garden and made about 250 paintings of water lilies. He and his Impressionist contemporaries were focused on color, light, and ...
Edvard Munch | The Scream
16 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As a young adult, Edvard Munch studied art. He was influenced early on by the Impressionists, but he really came into his own when he began using pain...
Alfred Stieglitz | The Steerage
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Alfred Stieglitz is considered by many to be the father of modern photography. He looked at the camera as not simply a tool to document the world, but...
Louis Daguerre | The Artist's Studio
14 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Louis Daguerre was an early pioneer of photography. While he didn't invent the medium, he did come up with a method that was workable, and perhaps mos...
Paul Cezanne | Mont Sainte-Victoire
13 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Diego Rivera | Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park
12 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today Diego Rivera is less of a household name than his wife Frida Kahlo, but in the early 20th century, he was the more established artist. In Dream ...
Frida Kahlo | The Two Fridas
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 h...
Olowe of Ise | Veranda Post
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The bulk of Olowe’s carvings seem to have been both decorative and functional artworks for the Yoruba kings and prominent families. One of his celeb...
Shiva Nataraja | Shiva the Lord of the Dance
09 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this depiction of Shiva we see the natural rhythms to everything in the cosmos. Birth and death, creation and destruction are symply phases all thi...
The Longmen Caves
08 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
China's Longmen Caves or Longmen Grottos are a UNESCO world heritage site. Starting in the 5th century CE, artists chiseled away at the limestone carv...
Stonehenge
07 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Stonehenge has captured the imagination of people for centuries. It is hard to categorize the massive stone work. Is it a feat of engineering, sculptu...
Machu Picchu
06 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Machu Picchu would translate to “old mountain” but it isn’t that old. While stone ruins are often associated with ancient civilizations thousand...
The Taj Mahal
05 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Taj Mahal is one of the most beautiful man-made structures in the world. It is a UNESCO world heritage site considered to be one of the modern won...
The Moai of Rapa Nui
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today's mini episode is about the Moai statues of Rapa Nui, commonly referred to as Easter Island. The Moai are one of the artworks I will have in my ...
The Terracotta Warriors
03 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1974, some farmers began digging a well. Before they struck water, they stumbled upon an amazing archaeological and artistic treasure, the terracot...
The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead | The Judgment of Hunefer
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This mini episode is about The Book of the Dead, a collection of funerary texts from ancient Egypt. To better understand the collection as well as the...
The Treasures of King Tutankhamun's Tomb
01 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On November 26, 1922, Howard Carter prepared to enter the tomb of a little-known pharaoh. Nobody had set foot inside the space for over 3,000 years, b...
The Pyramids at Giza
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Once again I will be hosting my annual Arts Madness Tournament this Spring. I will be posting daily mini-episodes covering 64 diverse artists and artw...
The Aztec Sun Stone or The Calendar Stone
30 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Once again I will be hosting my annual Arts Madness Tournament this Spring. I will be posting daily mini-episodes covering 64 diverse artists and artw...
The Lascaux Cave Art
29 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Once again I will be hosting my annual Arts Madness Tournament this Spring. I will be posting daily mini-episodes covering 64 diverse artists and artw...
Announcing Arts Madness Tournament and the Apollo 11 Stones
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This year I will once again host my annual Arts Madness Tournament in March. I will be posting daily mini-episodes on 64 different artworks over the n...
Thomas Nast the Father of the Modern Santa
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the bustling streets of 19th-century New York, amid the ink-stained presses and frenetic energy of the newsroom, Thomas Nast, a German-born America...
Banksy | Girl with Balloon
22 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2018, Banksy's painting, Girl with Balloon went up for auction. As the gavel sounded to announce a winning bid of about $1 million, everyone in the...
Keith Haring | DJ Dog
18 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Keith Haring is one of my absolute favorite artists because he was earnest and direct in his paintings. In his works, he would reduce complicated mess...
Polykleitos | Doryphoros
15 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Around 450 BCE as Polykleitos walked the dusty streets of Argos, art and philosophy intertwined. The Greeks of the classical era produced works that...
Gustave Caillebotte | Paris Street; Rainy Day
11 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many know the image of Paris Street; Rainy Day, but somehow far fewer know the artist who painted it, Gustave Caillebotte. He was born in Paris in the...
Max Beckmann | The Night
08 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Max Beckmann was a German painter born on February 12, 1884. While he is often associated with the expressionist movement, he actually rejected that l...
Bob Ross | Mystic Mountain
04 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bob Ross served in the United States military for 20 years before he became America's favorite painter of "happy little trees." This week, my guest To...
Louis Prang | Father of the American Christmas Card
01 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Louis Prang not only started the company that makes some of my favorite art classroom supplies, he created the artist's color wheel and introduced Chr...
Tom DesLongchamp | Portrait of Don
27 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tom DesLongchamp is an incredible multidisciplinary artist, but it is his marker drawings that caught my attention. Tom has long felt the drive to cre...
The World's Oldest Artwork? (encore)
24 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists have discovered some fossilized impressions of hand and footprints they estimate to be well over 100,000 years old. They also believe that ...
Man Ray | Ingres's Violin
20 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Man Ray was a pioneer of cameraless photography. His signature technique was the "Rayograph" created by placing objects directly onto light-sensitive ...
Victor Vasarely and Op Art
17 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Victor Vasarely was a Hungarian-French artist known for his innovative style and contributions to the Op Art movement. One of Vasarely's most famous w...
Introducing: The Art of Crime
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As a podcast listener, a few topics I enjoy are obviously art and history, but I also like true crime and really anything with a compelling story. The...
Heinrich Campendonk
10 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Heinrich Campendonk may not be a household name, but he was a part of some of the most influential groups of 20th century modernism. He was a part of ...
Wolfgang Beltracchi - The Art of Fraud
06 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Wolfgang Beltracchi is possibly the most artful forgers ever to have gotten into the game. While most would create a forgery by meticulously copying e...
Kawaii and Hello Kitty
03 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kawaii is a Japanese word translating to something like "cute" or "adorable" but it is much more than that. While kawaii figures tug at the heartstrin...
4th Anniversary Fun Factstravaganza
30 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It has been four years of exploring visual art in an audio medium. To mark the anniversary, I thought it would be nice to have a few of my podcast bud...
Bauhaus Parties
27 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Bauhaus was a small but enormously influential art school in the 1930s. It was known for producing architecture and industrial design with clean l...
Hans Holbein the Younger | The Ambassadors
23 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hans Holbein the Younger painted The Ambassadors in 1533. It is a massive, life sized double portrait filled with symbolism that gives us insights int...
Sugar Skulls
20 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sugar skulls have been a popular decoration for Day of the Dead celebrations for hundreds of years now. Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead is a com...
Spirit Photography | Some Spooky Fun Historic Hoaxes
16 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
William Mulmer was born in 1832. For historical context, the oldest known Daguerrotype is from 1837, so Mulmer was born right around the same time as ...
Raku
13 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Raku bowls are humble. They are hand formed starting from a flat, circular base and coils built up around the sides. The process results in each piece...
Michelangelo | The Sistine Chapel Ceiling (encore)
09 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode gives a brief overview of the life of Michelangelo, one of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance, and one of his most famous wo...
Pencils
06 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For today's mini episode, I thought it might be nice to change things up a little bit and cover the history of a medium rather than a specific artwork...
Xu Bing | A Book from the Sky
02 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Skipping ahead a few hundred years, the artist Xu Bing created Book from the Sky as a monumental print. It is brobably among the most ambitious, labor...
Frank Gehry | Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain
29 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Modernists said, “form follows function” focusing on how people will use a space, but Gehry focuses on how people will react to the space. His goa...
Arthur Boyd | Nebuchadnezzar on Fire Falling over a Waterfall (encore)
25 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is about Arthur Boyd the Australian painter known for his use of symbols from mythology to express his philosophical views. My guest this...
Diego Rivera (encore)
22 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today Diego Rivera is less of a household name than his wife Frida Kahlo, but in the early 20th century, he was the more established artist. Rivera wa...
Helen Frankenthaler | The Bay
18 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Bay was painted in 1963 as Frankenthaler had refined her soak and stain process. While Mountains and Sea was made with diluted oil paints, The Bay...
Olympic Medals in Art (Encore)
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 fiv...
Maria and Julian Martinez | Black on Black Pottery
11 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Maria Martinez belonged to the Tewa-speaking Pueblo people, known for their rich artistic heritage. Pottery-making was deeply rooted in Puebloan cultu...