Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History

Futurism wanted art to move at the speed of modern life—and it wasn’t interested in asking permission.
In this episode, James follows Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and the Italian Futurists as they transform speeding cars, factories, electric lights, experimental typography, and industrial noise into a new artistic language. Along the way, paintings learn to move, words escape their sentences, orchestras become factories, and performances erupt into confrontations.
But Futurism’s obsession with youth, aggression, destruction, and war carried it toward increasingly dangerous politics. Its artists helped reinvent modern art while confusing speed with progress—and innovation with wisdom.
Start your engines. Hide the museum collection. And perhaps take away Marinetti’s keys.
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J-Squared Atelier, LLC
for the love of art

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J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier)
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James William Moore
🌐 Website: James William Moore
📸 Instagram: @the_jwmartist
Catch Lattes & Art, our sister podcast—coffee-fueled conversations with artists about process, inspiration, and the beautiful mess behind the work.
You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...

Alexander Calder didn’t just make sculpture move—he taught it how to dance.
In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, James William Moore explores how a mechanically minded artist transformed gravity, air, balance, and motion into artistic materials. From Calder’s miniature, five-suitcase circus and his wire “drawings in space” to the encounter with Piet Mondrian that helped set abstraction in motion, we follow the experiments that led to his revolutionary mobiles and stabiles.
We’ll meet the avant-garde artists who helped name Calder’s inventions, discover why he abandoned predictable motors for the commitment-challenged behavior of air, and examine the careful engineering concealed inside sculptures that seem wonderfully effortless.
Calder’s work proves that playfulness can be rigorous, joy can be profound, and even gravity can earn a creative credit.
Presented by J-Squared Atelier.
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J-Squared Atelier, LLC
for the love of art

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Send us a text
Don't miss the video podcast version on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify!!!
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Connect with Us:
J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier)
🌐 Website: J2 Atelier
📸 Instagram: @J2Atelier
James William Moore
🌐 Website: James William Moore
📸 Instagram: @the_jwmartist
Catch Lattes & Art, our sister podcast—coffee-fueled conversations with artists about process, inspiration, and the beautiful mess behind the work.
You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...

On a stormy night in Palermo in 1969, thieves entered the Oratory of San Lorenzo and sliced a priceless Caravaggio masterpiece from its frame. Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence hasn’t been seen since.
In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, James follows the painting from Caravaggio’s turbulent life and revolutionary use of light and shadow into a decades-long mystery filled with Mafia informants, black-market collectors, contradictory confessions, and rumors of a masterpiece destroyed by rats and pigs.
Was the missing Caravaggio hidden, sold, buried—or lost forever? Explore how a sacred painting became criminal currency, why its disappearance continues to haunt the art world, and what we truly lose when a masterpiece vanishes.
Send us a Note! Let us know what you think!
J-Squared Atelier, LLC
for the love of art

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Send us a text
Don't miss the video podcast version on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify!!!
Follow & Subscribe to Art Happens

Connect with Us:
J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier)
🌐 Website: J2 Atelier
📸 Instagram: @J2Atelier
James William Moore
🌐 Website: James William Moore
📸 Instagram: @the_jwmartist
Catch Lattes & Art, our sister podcast—coffee-fueled conversations with artists about process, inspiration, and the beautiful mess behind the work.
You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...

Museums, spectacle, velvet ropes, and the moment art became an event.
In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, James looks at how museums went from quiet temples of culture to full-blown engines of anticipation, crowds, merch, timed tickets, and “limited engagement” panic. From the King Tut exhibition craze to Van Gogh posters, immersive rooms, gift-shop snow globes, and blockbuster shows marketed like superhero movies, this episode asks what happens when art history becomes an event experience.
Blockbusters brought millions of people into museums, sometimes for the first time. They created unforgettable encounters with masterpieces, expanded access, and made art feel exciting and public. But they also changed what museums value, what gets funded, and which artists get pushed aside when exhibitions have to sell tickets.
Because yes, art can be scholarly, moving, complicated, and transformative. It can also apparently come with a forty-eight-dollar tote bag.
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J-Squared Atelier, LLC
for the love of art

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Send us a text
Don't miss the video podcast version on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify!!!
Follow & Subscribe to Art Happens

Connect with Us:
J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier)
🌐 Website: J2 Atelier
📸 Instagram: @J2Atelier
James William Moore
🌐 Website: James William Moore
📸 Instagram: @the_jwmartist
Catch Lattes & Art, our sister podcast—coffee-fueled conversations with artists about process, inspiration, and the beautiful mess behind the work.
You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...

Robert Frank’s The Americans looks like a road trip, but it feels more like a cracked mirror held up to postwar America.
In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, James William Moore follows Frank across the highways, diners, jukeboxes, parades, cemeteries, sidewalks, and lonely rooms of 1950s America. Published in 1958 in France and 1959 in the United States, The Americans challenged the glossy national story of prosperity, confidence, and cheerful conformity. Instead of photographing the country as it wanted to see itself, Frank photographed the tension underneath the shine.
As a Swiss immigrant traveling through the United States, Frank brought an outsider’s eye to the myths of American success. His pictures reveal a country full of motion but also isolation, patriotism but also unease, abundance but also exclusion. From flags and cars to jukeboxes and segregated spaces, The Americans asks what gets left out when a nation becomes too busy believing its own mythology.
It is a photography book, a road trip, a cultural critique, and one of the most influential visual statements of the twentieth century.

Send us a Note! Let us know what you think!
J-Squared Atelier, LLC
for the love of art

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Send us a text
Don't miss the video podcast version on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify!!!
Follow & Subscribe to Art Happens

Connect with Us:
J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier)
🌐 Website: J2 Atelier
📸 Instagram: @J2Atelier
James William Moore
🌐 Website: James William Moore
📸 Instagram: @the_jwmartist
Catch Lattes & Art, our sister podcast—coffee-fueled conversations with artists about process, inspiration, and the beautiful mess behind the work.
You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...