Multimedia artist Chris Dyer is a dynamic innovator, treating skateboards, linen, the street, NFTs and traditional canvas all as surfaces to transform. Join our hosts as they talk to Dyer about his art, his desire to paint universal truths, his experiences with entheogenic medicines, and his pursuit of personal growth.
Known for his avant-garde, conceptual art and patented ultramarine blue, Yves Klein created work during the late 1950s and early '60s that push boundaries and provoke passionately varied responses from viewers. Join our hosts as they outline Klein's most influential art and performances from two very different perspectives.
Heralded by many as one of the most innovative contemporary abstract painters, Sam Gilliam created art over decades and decades that challenges the parameters of painting and sculpture, encouraging his viewers to reexamine their relationship to space and object. Join our hosts as they talk about this celebrated artist from their signature different perspectives.
Maurice Sendak, award-winning writer and illustrator of children's books, is a ubiquitous staple of so many people's imaginations and memories. He illustrated over 150 books, including one of the most beloved children's books of all-time: "Where the Wild Things Are." Join our hosts as they discuss the importance of Sendak's work, and unravel the darker, wilder side of his life and oeuvre.
Propelled by the Catholic Church and the Counter-Reformation, 17th century Baroque art was pious, dramatic, theatrical and emotionally intense. Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculptures typify these ideals, and showcase their maker's poetic mastery of material. Join our hosts as they discuss Bernini's sordid biography, and the key works he sculpted that will live in art history in perpetuity.
Contemporary artist, Adam Himebauch, has lived a lot of lives. He peppered the streets of Lower Manhattan with punny street art for years under the moniker Hanksy, painted colorful, pulsating murals and canvases as Adam Lucas and, now as Adam Himebauch, is tackling his most conceptual, trenchant era to date. Join our hosts as they discuss Himebauch's work and debate the merit of conceptual performance art.
Lady Pink, born Sandra Fabara, was a prominent figure in 1980s graffiti culture, and continues to be a trailblazing woman in the field. Although the world of graffiti was heavily male-dominated and physically dangerous, Lady Pink was undeterred, painting on subway cars, trainyards and walls right alongside the men. Join our hosts as they celebrate this significant woman, her heart, courage and artivism.
AI technology is starting to transform every area of life, including the process of making art. Artists are using AI more and more in their work, some as a tool and others as an entirely new conceptual practice. Either way, art made partially, or entirely, by a program is proving to be an uncharted territory when it comes to legality and copyright protection. Join our hosts, along with technology and intellectual property attorney Ira Schwartz, as they debate AI art from all the angles.
Grant Wood's 1930 painting "American Gothic" is one of the most recognizable images in art. Quoted, satired and parodied, this painting's legacy is undeniably enduring, but what exactly is the painting saying to its viewers? Join our hosts as they deep dive into this ubiquitous work, and others, to sort through Wood's complicated, often disparate, feelings about 1930s America and his place in it.
Among the most ground-breaking of contemporary photographers, Cindy Sherman explores themes of fantasy, feminism, (art) history, the abject, and the self through her work. Using makeup, costumes and staged scenery to manipulate her appearance and perform as various characters, Sherman is technically the subject of her photographs; however, the Sherman we see in each image is never who Sherman truly is. Seeing her body as a storytelling tool, Sherman dissolves completely into her characters, tran...
During the mid-19th century, there was a schism among artists between painting in a traditional manner that evoked the past, and disrupting that past and creating something innovative and new. Édouard Manet painted work that perfectly synthesizes this tension between the historical and the contemporary, forging an important path toward modernity. Join our hosts as they unravel the controversies of some of Manet's most shocking paintings.
Eugène Delacroix--innovative, creative, with a flare for drama--was a transformative figure in the art world during the 19th century. Bucking the traditionalism of more rigid French academic painting, Delacroix forged his own style, celebrating passion, the exotic and moments imbued with the utmost intensity. Join our hosts as they discuss the context and creativity of this vibrant painter.
The work of René Magritte's is so iconic that one of his apple paintings inspired Paul McCartney to name the Beatles' company Apple Corps., which, in turn, inspired Steve Jobs to name his burgeoning computer company, Apple. Join our hosts as they explore the conceptual brilliance and paradoxical mystery of Magritte.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are in their relative infancy, but nevertheless taking the artworld by storm. Are these digital, object-less works a tech fad or do they indicate the expansive possibilities of what art can be? Join our hosts as they try to better understand this new frontier.
Across the art spectra, there is unfortunately a correlative connection between artists and addiction or addictive behavior. From Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, to Mark Rothko to Nan Goldin, some of the most insightful creatives have suffered from addictions that not only affected them personally, but also informed the aesthetic of their art. Join our hosts, and their special guest, licensed therapist and expert in addition, Marnie Zang Katularu, as they try and unravel the relationship between art and...
Biography often plays an integral role in how any given artist is historicized; however, in the case of Yoko Ono, that biography hasn't done her much service. Credited with breaking up the Beatles, Ono's relationship with John Lennon has unfortunately eclipsed her prolific, provocative and profound career as a conceptual artist. Join our hosts as they discuss and debate Ono's work and legacy.
The sculptures and public artworks of post-Minimalist Richard Serra are dazzling in their massive scale and quietly contemplative in their aesthetic simplicity. Join our hosts as they discuss Serra's sculptural innovations, public art controversies and the ways in which he activates viewers through an experiential design.
With the terrifying outbreak of COVID-19, we're all living in a new reality. Pandemics; however, are not new and have, throughout history, generated hopeful, helpful and life-saving artistic responses. Join our hosts as they discuss a panoply of art that has emerged from pandemics ranging from the Bubonic Plague to the Spanish influenza to the HIV/AIDS epidemic to the Ebola virus.
It's widely written that photography was "invented" by Louis Daguerre in 1839; however, nothing has such a clear or clean origin story. Join our hosts as they dissect the very beginnings of photography: how it was invented when it was, who used this new medium, why that matters and who actually invented it.
Salvador Dalí is one of history's most iconic, ironic, illogical, irreverent, and integral artists. Best known for his melting clocks and curvy mustache, Dalí created masterful surrealistic landscapes that unlock the collective unconscious and speak to our most intimate and vulnerable anxieties. Join our hosts as they attempt to decode the ultimately unknowable paintings and persona of Dalí.
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is arguably the most vehemently anti-authoritarian living artist. In his work across media, Ai tackles the tropes of history, surveillance, abuse of power, and what it means to test the limits of freedom. Regarding this last theme, the artist’s work and life have overlapped. Ai, critical of the Chinese government’s stance on democracy and human rights, has proactively investigated governmental corruption and cover-ups in his work, getting arrested for 81 days in the proc...
In the late 1960s, artists began to expand the parameters of art in exciting ways: what it can look like, what it can be made from, where it can be located. Many took to nature--or took materials from nature--to better integrate the world, and concept of impermanence, into art. Join our hosts as they journey through their favorite land art creations.
Art is often political--a discerning lens scrutinizing its surroundings--or perhaps satirical, culturally inquisitive or rebellious in nature. Art can also be fantastically romantic. Join our hosts as they share the art that they think is most steeped in seduction.
"Whistler's Mother" is one of the most recognizable and parodied paintings of all-time. The man who painted it, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, is one of the most significant artists and aesthetic game-changers in American history. Join our hosts as they explore his revelatory paintings, disruptions of tradition and ornery personality.
Georgia O'Keeffe is an American icon. Best--and most controversially--known for the series of "flowers" she painted between 1918-1929, O'Keeffe addresses themes of pleasure and place throughout her career: pleasure with and in the female body, but also the pleasure of being ensconced within the United States. Join our hosts as they unpack the tremendous career of this tremendous artist.
"The Scream" by Edvard Munch is one of the most iconic, ubiquitous and parodied paintings of all-time. Join our hosts as they explore why that is, what the painting could possibly mean, how it evokes the time and place from which it was made, and what's so seductive about its maker.
Ever since Giorgio Vasari published Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects in 1550, historians have played a key role in shaping the careers of artists. Although sometimes subtle and often behind-the-scenes, these tastemakers can puppeteer who becomes iconic and who fades into obscurity. Join our hosts as they explore the role of some of history's most influential critics, collectors, and culture changers.
For decades, Los Angeles has been the home to significant Latinx artists who use their work to celebrate their cultural heritage and form meaningful communities. The contemporary scene of Latinx artists in L.A., especially urban artists, has never been more vibrant. Join our hosts as they share their favorite work by their favorite makers.
Bob Ross, landscape painter and PBS legend, could always be counted on to have a fantastic hair-day and even more fantastic attitude. His TV show, The Joy of Painting , hasn't aired since the mid-90s; however, Ross has recently become more beloved than ever. Join our hosts as they discuss his works, his joyful demeanor and relatable art teaching style.
In 1949, Life Magazine published an article on the (in)famous Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock asking whether he was the greatest living painter. Join our hosts as they animatedly--and from wildly different perspectives--begin to answer this question.
