![Ivan Albright - The Picture of Dorian Gray]()
March 28, 2022
For this week's episode, I was joined by Kelly Henrikson, art teacher at Park Junior High, to talk 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 adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray.
As always, you can find pictures of the work on the website www.whoartedpodcast.com
The Picture of Dorian Gray is housed at The Art Institute of Chicago
If you would like to support the show, I recently partnered with Ko-Fi to be able to accept donations to cover the costs of production. You can buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/whoarted Because I do not want disruptive ads and I put nothing behind a paywall, listener donations are my only means of defraying the costs. I greatly appreciate your support.
![Arts Madness Round 4]()
March 23, 2022
This week we are on Round 4 of the annual Arts Madness Tournament. You can see the brackets and vote for your favorites artists at www.whoartedpodcast.com
In Round 3, some of my favorites were eliminated. Rodin, and his sculpture of The Burghers of Calais got knocked out by Duff Goldman. While I respect the audience's choices, I would encourage everyone to give a listen to the episode on Rodin. That piece is one of my favorite sculptures of all time. The story behind it is fascinating and the way that Rodin brought that story and the emotion to life in his work is absolutely amazing.
We are now down to just 8 artists remaining. As I created the podcast and the tournament, one of my goals was to capture diverse artists and help people to appreciate a broad range of artists and art forms. I think it is wonderful that this far into the tournament, we are going beyond the traditional western canon and still see spots for artists from around the world with very different styles and methods.
If you would like to support the show, I recently partnered with Ko-Fi to be able to accept donations to cover the costs of production. You can buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/whoarted Because I do not want disruptive ads and I put nothing behind a paywall, listener donations are my only means of defraying the costs. I greatly appreciate your support.
March 16, 2022
This is a bonus episode covering some of the highlights from this year's Arts Madness Tournament. Arts Madness is a great way to encourage kids to explore art history and learn about a variety of different artists. Please tell your art teacher friends to join in the fun with their classes and vote at www.whoartedpodcast.com
As always, if you enjoy the show, please follow and rate it on your favorite podcast app.
![MC Escher - Circle Limit 3]()
March 7, 2022
For this week's episode I talked with David Pittman, an amazing teacher I am lucky to count among my friends.
We discussed MC Escher and briefly touched on a few of his works including Circle Limit 3 from 1959. Interestingly, while Escher is often associated with math as his tessellations are enjoyed by a number of mathematicians and held up for their beautiful applications of geometry, Escher himself was not the greatest student and even failed his math courses in school. In a somewhat common theme among the brilliant and successful, he persisted and even seemed to lean in to developing his skills in an area where he struggled.
A big turning point came when Escher traveled to Spain and Italy in the early 20th century. At first, he was captivated by the beautiful Italian landscape, but after touring a 14th-century Moorish castle he started to shift his entire approach to art. Escher made sketches of the tile work and the beautiful tessellated patterns he saw then started to apply that patterning to his work. The great leap that he took, however, was introducing representational imagery to the patterns and having figures that shifted through the piece. In his metamorphosis piece, we see patterns of birds that become cubes that turn into a landscape then chess pieces. It is a little bit surreal, almost like an exquisite corpse drawing as seemingly unrelated images flow from one into the next but with an added layer of complexity because of the patterning.
As always you can find images of the works we discussed at www.whoartedpocast.com
While you are at the website, cast your vote in this week's matchups for the Arts Madness tournament.
Vote for Round 2 of Arts Madness here.
If you would like to support the show, I recently partnered with Ko-Fi to be able to accept donations to cover the costs of production. You can buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/whoarted Because I do not want disruptive ads and I put nothing behind a paywall, listener donations are my only means of defraying the costs. I greatly appreciate your support.
February 27, 2020
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
January 2, 2020
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.
December 12, 2019
For this episode, I sat down to talk with Chuck Hoff, an amazing art teacher who has mentored me and and collaborated on numerous projects. We talked about one of his favorite artists, Chuck Close, and share some of Close's background and the obstacles he has overcome to be one of the most prominent photorealist painters today. We discussed his set portrait from 2001.
November 7, 2019
In this episode we look at the iconic woodcut print, The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai. This piece was part of his series 36 Views of Mount Fuji and has been appreciated internationally for almost 200 years. Listen as we discuss a bit of the art history, analyze the piece and share our takeaways.
October 31, 2019
Georges Seurat is best known for his painting, Sunday on la Grande Jatte. In this episode, we discuss the pointillist masterpiece. Every episode features 3 sections in which we discuss the context in which the piece was created, what we see and connections we make as we examine the piece, and finally our takeaways or advice artists can apply to their own work.
