Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages

Michelangelo Merisi, born in 1571 amidst the darkness of the plague, would come to be known not by his christened name but by the name of his birthplace – Caravaggio. Orphaned young, the specter of loss would forever paint itself onto the canvas of his life. Yet, from this darkness, a genius of light and shadow would emerge, revolutionizing the art world with his raw and dramatic style.

While controversial in some circles, this mix of gritty realism and the divine was exactly what the Catholic church needed at the time. The Protestant Reformation was a backlash against what they considered to be a corrupt and greedy church. The Pope and others within the church commissioned art as a form of damage control. In an era of low literacy rates, images of artworks were powerful tools to spread ideas. Caravaggio’s paintings depicted a faith that was humble as he painted from his real-life observations of people on the streets. Though the subjects of the art were saints, the models were lowly people off the streets and Caravaggio painted every detail down to the stains in their clothing or dirt under their fingernails. The message was that the church was a place for the ordinary people. Using real people as models and placing them in settings familiar to the masses made the stories more immediately accessible and relatable.

The Calling of Saint Matthew is one of 250 artworks required for AP Art History. While I have not yet covered all of those artists/works you can find many on my Spotify playlist,⁠ AP Art History Cram Session

This is an encore presentation. Every January/February, I release daily episodes to refresh everyone's memory on the 64 artists and artworks that will be included in my Arts Madness Tournament held in March. While most of these daily episodes will be reruns, I will continue publishing new episodes on Mondays. 

Check out my other podcasts  Fun Facts Daily | Art Smart | Rainbow Puppy Science Lab

Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast. If you are interested in advertising on this or any other Airwave Media show, email: [email protected]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rachel Whiteread is a prominent British sculptor and a leading figure among the Young British Artists (YBAs) who rose to prominence in the late 1980s. Unlike the provocative work of her peers, Whiteread’s art is characterized by a quiet, minimalist focus on "negative space"—the empty air inside or around everyday objects. By casting these voids in industrial materials like plaster, resin, and concrete, she transforms the mundane into the monumental. Her breakthrough work, Ghost (1990), involved casting the entire interior of a Victorian living room, effectively turning a familiar domestic space into a haunting, solid artifact that captures subtle details like light switches and wallpaper textures in reverse.

In 1993, Whiteread became the first woman to win the Turner Prize, solidified by her controversial public sculpture, House, where she cast an entire three-story Victorian home in London. Her career continued with significant international commissions, including the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, also known as the Nameless Library, which serves as a poignant tribute to victims through the imagery of inverted, unreadable books. One of her most massive undertakings was Embankment (2005) at the Tate Modern, consisting of 14,000 translucent polyethylene boxes. Inspired by a box found while clearing her mother’s home, the installation explored themes of memory and the "unforgettable forgotten," utilizing the box as a universal symbol for how humans store and organize their histories.

Check out my other podcasts  Fun Facts Daily | Art Smart | Rainbow Puppy Science Lab

Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast. If you are interested in advertising on this or any other Airwave Media show, email: [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jean-Antoine Houdon was one of the greatest neoclassical sculptors in the late 18th century. Shortly after the American Revolution, the governor of Virginia asked Thomas Jefferson to find a sculptor to make a marble statue of George Washington for the state capital building. Jefferson was a self-taught architect and a big believer in the neoclassical movement's use of symbolism in art to convey a message that would leave the viewer wiser. He naturally turned to Houdon who traveled from France to Virginia to take Washington's measurements and even made a life mask (a plaster cast of the subject's face). Houdon created what many consider to be the most accurate representation we have today of George Washington.

This is an encore presentation. Every January/February, I release daily episodes to refresh everyone's memory on the 64 artists and artworks that will be included in my Arts Madness Tournament held in March.

Check out my other podcasts  Fun Facts Daily | Art Smart | Rainbow Puppy Science Lab

Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast. If you are interested in advertising on this or any other Airwave Media show, email: [email protected]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest this week is ⁠Mark Vernon⁠, author of ⁠Awake! William Blake and the Power of Imagination⁠. We discussed William Blake, the famous poet and visual artist known for his spiritually charged work. The piece we discussed was ⁠The Ancient of Days⁠.

This is an encore presentation. Every January/February, I release daily episodes to refresh everyone's memory on the 64 artists and artworks that will be included in my Arts Madness Tournament held in March. While most of these daily episodes will be reruns, I will continue publishing new episodes on Mondays.

Check out my other podcasts ⁠ Fun Facts Daily⁠⁠ | Art Smart⁠ |⁠ Rainbow Puppy Science Lab⁠

Who ARTed is an⁠ Airwave Media⁠ Podcast. If you are interested in advertising on this or any other Airwave Media show, email: ⁠[email protected]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Johannes 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 Balance is a work intended to encourage temperance and moderation being mindful that divine judgment is looming in the end.

Related episodes:

⁠The Unbelievable Story of Han van Meegeren⁠

⁠Jan van Eyck | The Arnolfini Portrait

This is an encore presentation. Every January/February, I release daily episodes to refresh everyone's memory on the 64 artists and artworks that will be included in my Arts Madness Tournament held in March. While most of these daily episodes will be reruns, I will continue publishing new episodes on Mondays. 

Check out my other podcasts  Fun Facts Daily | Art Smart | Rainbow Puppy Science Lab

Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast. If you are interested in advertising on this or any other Airwave Media show, email: [email protected]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices