Expanding Horizons in Art History (Ep. 465)

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by The Art of Education, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz. All right. Welcome to another exciting edition of Let’s Talk About a Whole Bunch of Art History with Kyle Wood. Kyle, welcome back to the show. How are you?

I’m doing well. Thank you very much for having me.

Yeah. Well, thanks for coming back on. Every couple months, we got to touch base, share a little bit about some favorite artists that we love, and just introduce people, hopefully, to some new artists, some new ideas.

And so, today, we’re going to dive into a few famous artists and a few artists that are maybe lesser-known that you can teach alongside of them. So, we don’t have all of our focus on Picasso and Matisse and Dalí, who are all great, but there’s so much more out there. So, we’re going to dive into all of that today.

Before we get there, though, Kyle, you and I, we actually saw each other last month at NAEA. But it has been a while since you’ve been on the podcast, so I’d love an update from you. How are things? Anything new and exciting in your classroom, or outside of the classroom, that you’ve been up to lately?

So, you know me, I am a workaholic, so-

True.

… there’s been a lot. So, right after the NAEA, I had my school art show, so 500 artworks around. And I decided that was the perfect week to also screen print T-shirts with all 500 kids in my building.

That is a choice.

It was a choice. Maybe not a great one, but I feel much better this week than I did last. And if that weren’t enough going on, I am super excited to announce I’m actually launching a new podcast at the end of the month.

Oh, okay.

So, the only people outside of my network who know about this are my children and now, you.

And now, a few thousand people that listen to this episode.

Yes. For a while now, I have been researching and writing on a number of different topics because I am a nerd about more than just art history.

So, starting on Monday, April 28th, there’s going to be a new podcast out there called Fun Facts Daily. It is what it sounds like. It is a daily podcast focused just on positive stuff, just good stuff. I’ve got a word of the day, fact or fake, get your brain going. A little list of five fun facts all about one central topic for the episode.

I like it.

So, I’ll do the pyramids in Egypt, I’ll do the human brain. I’ll, of course, get some art stuff in there as well. But it’s just something I’ve been working on because I just want to be putting some positive stuff out there. And I want to be able to nerd out on more than just art history.

All right, broadening the horizons. I like it. I’m intrigued. So, yeah, we’ll definitely check that out. Are these going to be long episodes? They can’t be that long if you’re going to do it every day, right?

No, it’s just like 10 to 15-minute range. Just a quick hit of some stuff that is just good to know about. Not necessarily like you need to know, but just fun to know about some little things.

Just things that are fun to know. Okay. Cool, we’ll definitely check that out. So, I like that.

I also wanted to touch base with you on the Arts Madness Tournament because last couple years, we’ve had you on to talk about Arts Madness. That didn’t happen this year. I followed it, but for people who would like an update, can you give us, I guess, first of all, an explanation of what Arts Madness is, what they missed out on last month, and can you tell us what happened this year?

Okay. So, obviously, anybody in America, I’m sure, has heard of March Madness, the famous college basketball tournament. 64 different teams competing to get to just one ultimate winner. I do a March Madness-style bracketed tournament with 64 diverse artists, and every week, half are eliminated until just one remains. This year, I did it a little bit differently.

So, last year I did it, almost all of them were from the AP art history curriculum. But this year, I did one bracket was 32 AP art history pieces, and then I had another 32 that were sort of fan favorites. I like to think of it as my Salon des Refusés. And so, it came down to, in the end, Hokusai up against Maurizio Cattelan, or as my students know, The Banana.

The Banana. You and I did a whole Who ARTed podcast on Cattelan, so, I enjoyed seeing him advance there. The Banana guy.

Yeah. You must’ve been pretty persuasive because he made it decisively to the final round. But spoiler alert, for anyone who wanted to do this, Hokusai came out on top. And this was actually, I think, the second year in a row Hokusai came out on top, so I think I’m going to have to take him out next year.

I was going to say, two-time champion, you need to let somebody else in there at this point. So, yeah.

Yeah. I actually did the same thing. Kusama was a repeat winner a few years back as well, so definitely see some trends start to pop up.

That’s interesting. I like it. I like it. So, cool, let’s talk about some art here.

So, like I said at the beginning of the episode, we’re going to talk a little bit about some famous artists that we like to teach, but also some lesser-known artists that we can teach alongside those famous artists. So, I guess I’d like to start with Jackson Pollock.

Everybody knows Jackson Pollock. Everybody knows his giant drip paintings, his abstract expressionism, his action painting, everything that goes along with that. There are a lot of other artists that are in those similar styles, similar fields that we can share.

And we’re going to try not to talk too long about any of these, but you had one artist for sure that you really wanted to talk about alongside Pollock. So, Kyle, do you want to start us off on this one?

Okay. So, whenever I talk about Pollock and abstract expressionism, I cannot not talk about Janet Sobel, because Janet Sobel was an unlikely figure to revolutionize the art world. She was a grandmother who painted on her floor of her Brooklyn apartment, but she was doing all-over painting and drip paintings and experimenting with unconventional tools and materials. And she was doing that about a year before Pollock was.

I was going to say, all of the things that Jackson Pollock was doing, Janet Sobel was doing them first.

Yeah. It’s like when we talk about how people like Mondrian and Kandinsky will make dubious claims about “inventing abstract art,” but Hilma af Klint was doing it before them. Janet Sobel was the OG all-over painter, and she was doing stuff that was really innovative. And I think the thing that is most tragic is she was like a rising star.

Peggy Guggenheim was including her in her show, in her gallery. But then, Sobel moved to New Jersey and just being out of that central loop of the New York art scene, she just fell off the radar. And her work is still at MoMA. I’m not shedding tears for Janet Sobel, but she’s not as big a name as I think she deserved to be.

No, I think that’s an excellent point. And I was just going to share, along with Peggy Guggenheim, Clement Greenberg, the super famous critic, was also a big fan of Janet Sobel. And he’s got a story about taking Jackson Pollock to one of Janet Sobel’s shows, and Pollock was just loving all of it. And later on, Clement Greenberg straight up said, “Yeah, he stole those ideas from Janet Sobel,” which is crazy. And I don’t think that many people know that.

And so, I don’t know, I think between, like you said, the fact that she moved away, art at that time was a very insular place. And once you leave that circle, it’s tough to get that recognition. So, along with that idea, with a little bit of misogyny and just those connections being severed, she’s just not as well-known as she could be, or as she should be, if you want to make that argument. But yeah, Janet Sobel is definitely somebody to check out. Anything else about Janet Sobel before we move on?

No. Well, I could dedicate an episode to Janet Sobel, but I also do wonder, when we talk about AbEx and stuff, the big names, obviously, aside from Pollock, would be de Kooning. Both de Koonings were wonderful. Elaine de Kooning was a great artist in her own right.

Hot take, Elaine de Kooning, way better than Willem de Kooning.

I’ll stand by that take. So, they’re both good artists. They both have their merits, but yeah, I’d probably go with Elaine over Willem. But some other artists to put into that mix, I have long been such a big fan of Helen Frankenthaler. I like that she came up with a different variation that’s more soothing. It’s a different vibe to it than the standard drip frenzy that we tend to associate with AbEx. There’s that color field connection, and there’s just wonderful stories.

It always feels a little bit dubious, but there is this story that she would pour her mother’s nail polish down the drain, in the bathroom sink, to watch the colors flow and pool and mix as a child. And I don’t know, I don’t know how factual it is, but it’s a delightful story.

No, I would do the same thing, so I love that. The thing I always told my kids about Helen Frankenthaler is she’s the go-between. She bridges the gap between abstract expressionism and color field painting. And so, if you think of Jackson Pollock on one side and Mark Rothko on the other, Helen Frankenthaler is right in the middle of those two. And that’s, I don’t know, for me, just the easiest way to explain her work. And I think, I don’t know, I love her stuff, so I’m a big fan as well.

Yeah.

Okay.

Go ahead.

No, I was going to move on. Do you have anything else you want to say about Helen Frankenthaler?

No. Like I said, you could fill an episode with it, but Frankenthaler is a name worth checking out if you’re doing that. Get those diverse perspectives. Do we want to talk about Krasner in here?

I was also going to say, we need to talk about Lee Krasner. So, what do you want to say about her?

Well, part of what I like about Lee Krasner is, again, it was a different take on it. For those who don’t know, Lee Krasner was actually married to Jackson Pollock.

I was going to say, we should establish that yeah, she was married to Jackson Pollock.

But while he was off stumbling around the barn, working on his massive pieces, she was doing these smaller-scale, much more thoughtful and deliberate, still AbEx, constructions. And again, I think it’s just, it’s really helpful to see the different viewpoints of artists and the different ways that these movements could be carried out.

And yeah, it is a totally different way of working. I would say, her stuff is more thoughtful than Pollock’s. She works smaller for sure, but she really does, I don’t know, a lot of those similar techniques. She’s got the dabs and the drips. But there’s also a lot of letters and numbers and symbols in there.

And she’s got this whole Little Images series. I think I wrote a 30-page paper on that series when I was in college. But there’s so much meaning and so much thought put into what she does. And there’s a lot to explore there, so I would encourage everybody to check that out. So, yeah, if you’re teaching about Jackson Pollock, also take a look at Janet Sobel and Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner.

All right. Kyle, where would you like to go next? Which famous artist should we talk about next?

Let’s tackle Picasso, because it’s one that I feel like you got to show. But I also, every time I show him, I’m a little ugh, just because there are so many stories of Picasso that are… They’re not great.

No, no, he’s a terrible, terrible person. And I don’t know, I always talk about my dislike of Picasso and his artwork. Famous for making 30,000 artworks, and I like to tell people I like about four of them. Just I’m not a fan, but he-

Guernica is good.

That is one of the four. But I don’t know, he played such a big part in art history, so many parts of it, that you almost have to talk about him. But there are also other artists who can fit the bill, who are doing similar things. There are a lot of connections or a lot of similarities between their work and Picasso’s work. First one I wanted to bring up was Derrick Adams. Are you familiar with Derrick Adams? Do you know him?

I’m thinking of the African American artists, right? The-

Yes, [inaudible 00:15:33].

He does a lot of… I’m thinking of the people in pools, the floaties, stuff like that. Am I right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes, we are great at describing. But no, I was going to say, he’s got a collage aesthetic, but there’s also a cubist look to a lot of his stuff, his figures especially. But there’s a lot about joy, a lot about celebration. And so, I really like that aspect of it. Because like you said, going back to the bringing good news into the world, it’s fun to show creative, joyful artwork. And Derrick Adams does that a lot. And so, it’s a good contrast with Picasso’s work, which can be very dark, very depressing.

And so, along with that joy, Derrick Adams also has a lot of bigger ideas about the Black experience, about culture and identity, but also about empowering artists and using art as a healing tool. And just a lot of layers, a lot of different goals that he has with his artwork that I think are really respectable and really good discussions to have. So, I like Derrick Adams along with Picasso. So, anybody else that you like to teach along with Picasso?

Okay. So, along similar lines, although I got to say, I love the Derrick Adams connection. I was questioning my knowledge as you brought up Adams, because I didn’t see that connection. It’s almost like a point, counterpoint. Because his stuff, as you describe it, I see what you’re talking about, but I don’t think of it as cubist and fragmented the way that I do some other stuff. But I think a more direct one that also still has a bright and uplifting tone that I talk about in my classroom every single year, Britto. Ramiro Britto is doing stuff that I think it’s technically neo-pop is how we would classify it, right?

I think that’s fair, yeah.

It’s a pop art sensibility, but it’s got the fragmentation of cubism, simplified shapes. But his stuff, again, it’s very bright. It’s cartoonish in so many subjects, but there’s a very deliberate positive tone, and I like that. I like stuff that has good vibes. There’s too much going on already to not just take a break and enjoy some pretty pictures that are affirming.

Yeah, for sure. Well, and that also gives me the chance to bring up that I interviewed him, oh, God, probably seven or eight years ago now. So, very old Art Ed Radio podcast. We’ll link to that in the show notes if anybody wants to hear him chat about his work for a little bit.

And then, one last artist real quick, Manuel Mendive. He’s Cuban, I believe, but I just see some similarities between him and Picasso with how he’s doing composition, how he’s bringing in fantastical creatures, anything about Picasso and his minotaurs and whatever else. And Mendive has a lot of really very, I don’t know, very creative, very fantastic creatures that come into his work. And he also has a lot of the influence of African art in his stuff as well. So, I suggest people look up Manuel Mendive and just see if that’s somebody you may want to bring in as well.

All right. Kyle, can we move on to Salvador Dalí? Everybody loves teaching… Well, maybe not everybody loves teaching, most teachers I know love teaching Dalí, but there are the other artists that can go along with him. So, any suggestions that come to mind when we talk about Dalí?

Well, okay. So, I’m going to be honest, I’m not a huge surrealist, but there are plenty of other artists who are doing interesting stuff along those lines. I personally, I’m a big fan of Matta.

When I was in college, Roberto Matta… I went to The Art Institute of Chicago, and one of my absolute favorite paintings in that collection is Roberto Matta’s Earth is a Man. The layering, the sort of… It’s surreal, but it’s abstract and it… It’s part color field, part… I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like that Joan Miró-type of abstracted surrealism vibe that I’m a huge fan of.

Okay, I like it. I like it. I wanted to bring up two artists to go along with Dalí. One is Remedios Varo. She is a great surrealist, incredible skill level.

So, if you’re thinking about Dalí with his tiny brushes and his details and his technical skill, Varo can go step for step with him with everything that she does. She’s also very interested in science, and so you’ll see a lot of scientific imagery and different things like that in her work, which I really love. Gives it a little bit of extra depth, which I think is really cool, but just very intricate stuff. A lot of symbolism and just a lot of exploration of different scenes, different themes, different ideas, which I really like.

And then, I was also going to say Leonora Carrington. If you need a little bit of feminism to go with your surrealism, she’s great. She’s always depicting women as really powerful, really knowledgeable, a lot of transformative transformation in her work as a theme. And she creates these just other-worldly scenes. And I’m thinking back to Garden of Earthly Delights-type stuff with… And just the depth and the detail that goes with that. So, Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, both great.

Okay. Now, Kyle, I-

And since you mentioned the Garden of Earthly Delights, I feel like any listeners who don’t know and want to look it up, it’s by Hieronymus Bosch.

Yes, thank you. Sorry, I just assume. And I should not assume because yeah, everybody has different artists.

We’re here to tell people names to look up for art history.

Exactly.

So, I just want to make sure we get it in there.

No, hopefully, everybody’s making a list right now. Okay. So, Kyle, I wanted to talk about Matisse, but first, you have added to my list, so this came as a surprise for me. I was like, “Who are we going to do next?” And you have put down Duchamp, whom I love, one of my three or four favorite artists of all time. I love Duchamp. You have two artists to go along with Duchamp. I’m not familiar with either, so can you please enlighten us?

Okay. So, I think we’ll have to do a lightning round because I don’t have strong feelings about Matisse and the artists that you have there, but Marcel Duchamp, best known for, obviously, Fountain and the Innovation with the readymades and all of that. But along the lines of Janet Sobel, there’s a lot of controversy surrounding Fountain.

Because as I’m sure you’re familiar, it was submitted anonymously. It was signed, “R. Mutt.” And the story goes that it was delivered by a woman. It could have been Duchamp in a female guise, it could have been a friend of his. Or it could have been Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, who was a artist’s model and an artist herself, who was known to do stuff with found objects, before Duchamp and his Fountain. So-

I love it.

… I always love to share that story when I’m talking about Duchamp and his innovations. And this other one. Okay. So, this one, I discovered basically trying to meet a need in my classroom. You know how we always talk about, “We want to be showing diverse artists to reflect our student population?”

Yeah, exactly.

Everything like that. So, where I’m teaching, I have a number of students of Indian ancestry, and I’m looking at different artists trying to find stuff. And one that I came across, who I found absolutely fascinating, was Charuvi Agrawal.

Now, she grew up in India, studied in Canada, if I recall correctly, she studied animation. But she’s also done these amazing sculptures. The one I always show my students is 26,000 Bells of Hanuman. And I like this because when we talk about sculpting and repurposing with found objects and different materials, the choice of the bell, I think, was a brilliant choice because of the fact that it doesn’t just look cool, it adds this sonic element to it. Hearing 26,000 bells go off as you approach this sculpture that looks like a Hindu deity, it’s amazing.

But then, also, for those who aren’t familiar, it is customary when you enter a Hindu temple to ring a bell, which helps to drive out other thoughts. It alerts the deity of your presence. And also the sound helps to clear the mind. It pushes out the other side. So, it’s just like, it’s all these different elements of culture brought together in a relatively simple symbol. But when you see it three stories high, it’s amazing.

Yeah. Yeah, that sounds incredible. So, I really appreciate the fact that trying to put together this whole list for everyone, and you at the same time are giving me more to look up and more to explore. So, thank you. I appreciate that. Excuse me.

So, let’s do a Matisse lightning round. I have four other artists that I think work well, along with Matisse, all doing collage, bright colors, a lot of times geometric things with lines, shapes, patterns of varying degrees.

So, Hilary Pecis, fantastic, Beatriz Milhazes, Yinka Ilori, and if you shop at Target, Lisa Congdon. I think her stuff works really well, and she’s got a good vibe. So, anyway, any of those four would go great with Henri Matisse.

Kyle, anybody else that you want to talk about? Any other alternatives you want to give?

I could be here all day adding to the list. I feel like when we talk about Monet, we got to talk about Morisot and Cassatt.

Yes, for sure, for sure.

We got to start to recognize… Because I don’t know how Morisot fell off a little bit, because she was the one impressionist who was also accepted by the French Salon. But there are so many different great artists out there to check out, and I’m not going to pretend we’ve given an exhaustive list.

Oh, God, no, no.

But hopefully some names we can start to consider. And if you’re trying to find more diverse artists, check out the Arts Madness Tournament, because we’ve got 64 right there for you. So, just travel back in time. Go listen to all of that.

No, that’s a good place to start. And like you said, we’re never going to be able to do an exhaustive list, but hopefully this gives people the inspiration to start looking.

I guess just a quick piece of advice as we wrap things up. Beyond just listening to Arts Madness or checking out that, where can people find more about contemporary artists? Where would you suggest they start? Or where do you find new artists personally? What would you recommend for people who are wanting to explore more?

Okay. So, one that has driven me absolutely nuts now, because it’s come up in my searches so many times, is an article that you put up on The Art of Ed a long time ago. I very often will start just Googling terms that I’m thinking of, like fun facts about contemporary art or something like that.

I came across the artwork on the moon when I was just Googling, “I wonder if anyone’s ever done anything with art in space.” So, sometimes I just think about, what would I like to be in the world and start asking, “Has anyone ever done that?”

Does it exist? Yeah.

And very often, it does exist. But other sources that are great are The Art of Ed community. There have been multiple posts where people have been like, “Oh, I’m trying to find someone for this,” or, “Who are your favorite contemporary artists?” And in that thread, there are some gems that-

Oh, so many people.

… I have never heard of.

Exactly.

And you start to find amazing stuff that way. I also always recommend very similar lines. Before The Art of Ed community was around, I just leaned on the other people in my district. The first time I was doing Arts Madness, I just sent an email to my colleagues, saying, “I’ve got 50 artists here. I want more diversity. Who can hop onto this Google Doc and add some more for me?” And they did. People are often very generous about stepping up to share their insights and share their favorite artists. It’s a joy to share your favorite artists.

Oh, yeah, people love talking about the things they love. So, yeah, if you can reach out, if you have somebody who can talk about art with you, that’s a great place to start.

And as a bonus, you make stronger connections with your colleagues. You start to feel like you understand them better as you see, “Oh, yeah, we both love this.” Or you realize, “Oh, you like Agovina? I’ll be staying away from you now.”

Oh, that’s good. So, cool. All right. Well, Kyle, thank you for bringing on your expertise. Thank you for giving me some new artists to check out. And thanks for joining me for this one. It’s been fun.

Oh, thank you. I always appreciate you’re willing to tolerate my presence. So, thanks.