This art history video discussion looks at Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks", 1942, oil on canvas, 84.1 x 152.4 cm / 33-1/8 x 60 inches (The Art Institute of Chicago).
Discrimination undermined the sense of victory for African-American vets. Horace Pippin, Mr. Prejudice, 1943, oil on canvas, 46 x 35.9 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art). A conversation with Dr. Jessica T. Smith, Susan Gray Detweiler Curator of American Art and Manager, Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Dr. Steven Zucker. Find learning related resources here: https://smarthistory.org/seeing-america-2/
House of the Eagles, sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), c. 1400–1521, and Mictlantecuhtli and Eagle Warrior, c. 1400–1521, terracotta and plaster, life-size, found in the House of the Eagles (The Templo Mayor Museum, Mexico City) A conversation between Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Smarthistory.
This week we tackle the intersection of art and our changing climate. Throughout history, art has helped reveal the climate around us and highlight our fragile relationship to it. We look at navigational charts from the Marshall Islands, Katsushika Hokusai’s "Under the Wave off Kanagawa", Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s "Hunters in the Snow", Mali's Great Mosque of Djenné, the Ise Shrine in Japan, steadily sinking Venice, the cave paintings of Lascaux, and Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, among others.
Art is often understood as a solitary act of personal expression. But art is also the basis for community from Alaska to Mali — and from gay rights advocates to Frida Kahlo appreciators. In this episode we’ll learn how community is created through art.
Note: While Yayoi Kusama is an incredibly influential artist, she has a complicated legacy. Writer and PhD candidate Dexter Thomas has called attention to anti-Black racism in her published writing, including her 2002 autobiography “Infinity Net.” We encourage you to view Crash Course Art History Episode 5 to hear our discussion about artists with problematic histories and join the conversation.
Chapters:
Introduction: Obliteration Room
The Great Mosque of Djenné
The Gelede
The Chief Johnson Pole
The Origins of Pride Flags
The Umbrella Art of Hong Kong
Review & Credits
Credits
From the Egyptian Book of the Dead to Tibetan Buddhist sand mandalas, humans have always reached for art to express religious ideas and impulses. In this episode, we’ll explore how concepts of the divine and spirituality intersect with the history of art.
Chapters:
Introduction: James Hampton
The Book of the Dead
Art & Spiritual Feelings
Sacred Spaces
Art as Prayer & Ritual
Review & Credits
Credits
From cave paintings to public murals, humans have told stories with art for thousands of years. In this episode of Crash Course Art History, we discover that visual storytelling is elementally human — and so is competing over whose story is told.
Chapters:
Introduction: Narrative Art
History as Story
Contradictory Stories
Official & Unofficial Stories
Review & Credits
Credits
Our cultural perspectives shape how we perceive art, including who we see as contributing to its most important movements. In this episode of Crash Course Art History, we’ll get to the truth behind the creation of modernism and bust the myth of its European beginning. We’ll show how modernism was a truly global movement, in which far-flung artists responded to a rapidly changing world.
Chapters:
Introduction: "The Comedian"
How Modernism Started
Modernism's Influences
Decentering Europe
Multiple Modernisms
Review & Credits
Credits
A conversation between Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris standing in front of Lysippos, Apoxyomenos, Roman marble copy after Greek bronze original dating to c. 300 B.C.E. (Vatican Museums, Rome, Italy), and ARCHES video. Created by Steven Zucker and Beth Harris.
A conversation between Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris standing in front of Lysippos, Apoxyomenos, Roman marble copy after Greek bronze original dating to c. 300 B.C.E. (Vatican Museums, Rome, Italy), and ARCHES video. Created by Steven Zucker and Beth Harris.
Can art save lives? Not exactly, but our most prized professionals (doctors, nurses, police officers) can learn real world skills through art analysis. Studying art like René Magritte's Time Transfixed can enhance communication and analytical skills, with an emphasis on both the seen and unseen. Amy E. Herman explains why art historical training can prepare you for real world investigation. Lesson by Amy E. Herman, animation by Flaming Medusa Studios Inc.
Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker & Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
How long do you typically look at an artwork, and what can you learn in that time? In this episode of Crash Course Art History, we’ll acquire a toolbox of terms to help us discover how all art is influenced by the time and place it was made in.
Chapters:
Introduction: Art in Context
Art Historians' Tools & Spring Way
Art's Function & an Elephant Mask
Using Context to Compare & Contrast
Review & Credits
Credits
Pierre Auguste Renoir, The Swing (La balançoire), 1876, oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Giovanni Bellini, Madonna of the Meadow, c. 1500, oil and egg on synthetic panel, transferred from wood, 67.3 x 86.4 cm (The National Gallery) Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris.
Learn how to paint like Willem de Kooning, one of the key artists of the postwar Abstract Expressionist style, also referred to as "action painting," with IN THE STUDIO instructor Corey D'Augustine.
Continue to explore the multi-layered techniques of Willem de Kooning with Corey D'Augustine in the second part of How to Paint like Willem de Kooning. Over the course of a career lasting nearly seven decades, de Kooning would work through a wide array of styles, eventually cementing himself as a crucial link from New York School painting to European modernism. Physical labor and countless revisions were constants in his work, which ranged from abstraction to figuration, often merging the two. “I never was interested in how to make a good painting…,” he once said. “I didn’t work on it with the idea of perfection, but to see how far one could go…” The female figure was an especially fertile subject for the artist. His paintings of women were among his most controversial works during his lifetime and continue to be debated today.
Learn how to paint like artist Yayoi Kusama, a vital part of New York’s avant-garde art scene from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, with IN THE STUDIO instructor Corey D'Augustine. Yayoi Kusama developed a distinctive style utilizing approaches associated with Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Pop art and Feminist art. “I am an obsessional artist,” she once said. “People may call me otherwise, but…I consider myself a heretic of the art world.” Learn about the techniques of other New York School painters like de Kooning, Rothko, and Pollock in MoMA's new free, online course, "In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting."
A brief introduction to Italian Renaissance art. Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.