Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History

Ana Mendieta didn’t simply place the body in nature—she let it disappear into it.
In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, James William Moore explores how Ana Mendieta transformed earth, fire, water, blood, flowers, photography, and film into a deeply personal language of exile, memory, ritual, and belonging. From her childhood departure from Cuba and years in Iowa to the haunting Silueta works that fused body and landscape, we trace the experiences that shaped one of the most distinctive practices of the 1970s.
We’ll look at the influence of Afro-Cuban, Catholic, and Indigenous traditions on her work, examine why documentation became essential to art designed to vanish, and confront the questions surrounding her 1985 death and the legacy that still shadows discussions of her career.
Mendieta’s work reminds us that a body can disappear and still leave a mark—and sometimes absence is the thing we see most clearly.
Presented by J-Squared Atelier.
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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, ...

In 1715, Amsterdam officials faced a decorating dilemma: Rembrandt’s monumental masterpiece The Night Watch didn’t fit between two doors. Their solution? Cut it down to size.
In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, James explores how Rembrandt transformed a conventional militia portrait into a scene bursting with light, movement, muskets, and one mysteriously glowing girl—only for later generations to trim away figures, architecture, and nearly two feet of canvas.
Discover how a small seventeenth-century copy preserved evidence of the original composition, and how the Rijksmuseum used advanced imaging and artificial intelligence to reconstruct what the missing sections may have looked like.
It’s a story about artistic intention, changing attitudes toward preservation, and the expensive lesson Amsterdam learned three centuries too late: when a masterpiece doesn’t fit the room, the masterpiece isn’t the furnishing problem.
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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, ...

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.
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, ...

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.
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, ...

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, ...