Episodi

  • Claude Monet | Wheat Stacks

    Claude Monet | Wheat Stacks
    Feb 23 2026
    My guest this week is Jen Leban from The Art of Education. For any fellow art teachers listening, check out The Art of Ed Community and I had the priviledge of writing for the AOE magazine last year, so check out my articles. We're kicking off the annual Arts Madness Tournament and I thought there would be no better way to start things off than inviting Jen to join me for a friendly discussion about an artist we have different opinions about. Please join in the fun by weighing in and cast your vote for your favorite artists/artworks in this year's tournament. Each week, half will be eliminated until only 1 remains. The impressionist movement in late 19th-century art represented a significant shift away from the rigid, representative styles that had dominated the art world for centuries. Claude Monet, a central figure in this movement, began to experiment with color and light in a way that captured the fleeting essence of a scene rather than its exact details. His series of wheat stack paintings, created around 1890, exemplifies this approach. These works were not just about the subject itself, but about how different lighting and weather conditions at different times of the day transformed the appearance of these common agricultural structures. This innovative technique challenged contemporary notions of art and paved the way for future abstract movements. Monet's wheat stacks were meticulously crafted over months, despite their seemingly rapid, "impressionistic" brushwork. He often worked on multiple canvases simultaneously, switching between them as the light changed in the field to accurately document each subtle variation. This practice was a direct response to the rise of photography, which could capture reality with precision that painters could not match. By focusing on elements that the cameras of the time could not—such as the vibrant play of light and an imaginative use of color—Monet and his peers redefined the role of the artist. Their work, once considered controversial and even "unfinished" by critics, is now celebrated for its revolutionary impact on the history of modern art. Shoutout and a bit thanks to Podranker for including me on their list of ⁠Best Art History Podcasts⁠ 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: advertising@airwavemedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    31 min
  • Artist Interview | Herb Williams

    Artist Interview | Herb Williams
    Feb 22 2026
    Herb Williams is an incredibly talented sculptor bringing crayons to a whole new dimension. I sat down to talk to Williams about his background, his artistic influences, and exactly how and why he uses crayons to sculpt. He shared his memories of making art as a child as well as his experience working in a foundry making lost wax castings before he decided to pursue a literal dream of making sculptures out of crayons. 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: advertising@airwavemedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    53 min
  • Diego Velazquez | Las Meninas

    Diego Velazquez | Las Meninas
    Feb 21 2026
    Diego Velazques was one of the most significant painters of Spain's Golden Age in the 17th century. He was a master of both portraiture and genre painting, Las Meninas is a sort of mix of both. We see people who seem rather formally dressed by today’s standards, but the subject is also, it was a peak behind the curtain of royal life. Withing the work, the first focal point would be the little girl, the infanta margarita, daughter of the king and queen of spain. She is dramatically lit from the side by light streaming in from the window. The top half of the composition is essentially in shadow, and we see her looking out at us, the viewers. Diego Velazquez included himself in the scene as he stands before his giant canvas. Within this oil on canvas painting, we see a representation of a painter working on canvas. Velazquez also seems to break the fourth as he looks out at the viewer. There is a figure standing in the doorway in the back of the composition. The strong light in the doorway pulls our focus there as a secondary focal point, and that figure seems to be caught in motion and again, he looks out at us, the viewers. In this episode, I referenced Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait. To learn more about that, check out my previous episode: ⁠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: advertising@airwavemedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    10 min
  • Leonardo da Vinci | The Last Supper

    Leonardo da Vinci | The Last Supper
    Feb 20 2026
    One Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous works is not housed in a museum. It is in the Convent of Santa Maria in Milan Italy. It seems totally fitting for a depiction of the last supper was painted on the wall in the convent’s dining hall. Visitors today are often surprised by how enormous the work it. The People are life sized on this massive 15 by 29 foot painting. Another surprising fact is that while people flock to see Leonardo’s work on the wall of the convent, very little if any of what we see there today was actually painted by Leonardo. 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: advertising@airwavemedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    10 min
  • The Aztec Calendar Stone

    The Aztec Calendar Stone
    Feb 19 2026
    The Aztec Sun Stone, also known as the Calendar Stone, is a large, round stone carving that represents Aztec mythology and cosmology. It depicts the five consecutive worlds of the sun, with the date 13 Reed marking the start of the fifth and final sun. It was created in the 15th century and is about 3 and a half meters wide, almost a meter thick, and weighs 25 tons. Learn more about the history and symbolism of this famous Aztec piece. 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: advertising@airwavemedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    7 min
  • Caravaggio | The Calling of Saint Matthew

    Caravaggio | The Calling of Saint Matthew
    Feb 18 2026
    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: advertising@airwavemedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    15 min
  • Rachel Whiteread | Embankment

    Rachel Whiteread | Embankment
    Feb 17 2026
    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: advertising@airwavemedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    11 min
  • Jean-Antoine Houdon | George Washington

    Jean-Antoine Houdon | George Washington
    Feb 16 2026
    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: advertising@airwavemedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    12 min