Art History Happy Hour

Please enjoy this clip from our forthcoming episode of SEEN focusing on the Hulu series The Great. Become a Patreon member to get full access to our SEEN series: www.patreon.com/arthistoryhappyhour

In this two-part series, we explore the recent explosion of interest around NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and digital art.

In recent months, the term "fascism" has appeared frequently in the media. Many pundits have argued that the political tactics and rhetoric of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump echo those of fascist leaders like Benito Mussolini and Hitler. On the other hand, a smaller number of pundits have made the same claim about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, the 2016 Olympics in Rio marked the 80th anniversary of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which expressed the fascism of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime. In this episode, we discuss the rise of modern fascism; outline the major characteristics of fascist aesthetics; and look at a few examples of fascist aesthetics in practice, from the 1930s to the present day.

In this special Memorial Day Weekend episode, we interview Harriet F. Senie, Professor of Art History and Director of the M.A. program in Art History and Art Museum Studies Program at City College of New York, and co-founder of the organization Public Art Dialogue. Our topic is her recent book Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11 (Oxford University Press, 2016). Using the case studies of the Vietnam Memorial and the 9/11 Memorial, which open and close the book, we discuss how the function of public memorials has evolved over the past few decades: whereas memorials formerly helped the public to make sense of history, now, they're more likely to prompt private experiences of grief. We'll learn how and why this transition was made, and consider its negative impact on our ability to properly "memorialize" the tragedies of our time.

Chances are you probably remember "Beast Jesus"--the fresco painting in a Spanish church that was lovingly "restored" by a local parishioner in 2012, and soon became the laughing-stock of the internet. In today's episode, we discuss this and three other acts of conservation and restoration of works of art and architecture. In addition to explaining what made these acts controversial, we consider why conserving and restoring works of art raises philosophical questions about how we define, understand, and value works of art.

This past August-September, a seaside town in England hosted a very different kind of holiday attraction: a dystopian theme park by the anonymous street-artist-turned-legit-artist Banksy. Called "Dismaland," the park, erected on the site of a derelict lido, was actually a curated exhibition of works by dozens of artists, all of which expressed critical views of mainstream culture and politics. In this episode, we introduce you to Dismaland through a discussion of street art and Banksy's oeuvre; look closely at a few works on display; consider the ways in which Dismaland intersects with three major trends in contemporary art; and talk about the fate of Dismaland as recycled materials for a notorious refugee camp near Calais, France.

Joseph Mallord William Turner has been the subject of a number of projects recently, from the 2014 biopic Mr. Turner to the exhibition J. M. W. Turner: Painting Set Free (currently on view at the De Young Museum in San Francisco). For today's episode, we discuss Turner's depictions of the sea, a subject he represented throughout his career and which helps us understand the complexity of his art and ideas: the picturesque, sublime, engraving, etching, Immanuel Kant, Goethe’s color theory, Isaac Newton—we’ve got it all in here!

On March 18, 1990, two thieves entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and stole 13 objects from the museum's collection. This incident, which has remained largely unsolved, has drawn attention to the problem of art theft in the contemporary world. In today's episode, we discuss the heist, some of theories regarding who was involved, and the issue of art theft more broadly.

When we started Art History Today and its podcast, State of the Arts, we wanted to show how art and its history make and inform the news. Because many of our topics are stories that have continued to develop, we're using today's episode to review updates to four of our previous episodes. FYI, we're also continuing to update our coverage of these stories through posts to our Facebook page, and also, to the original blog posts for each episode.

In today's episode we discuss the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo, whose offices in Paris were attacked on January 7th, 2015. Charlie Hebdo is no stranger to controversy, having produced cartoons that have invited criticism and even violent action for decades. In its images, we can see the continuation of a long tradition of French satire, the characteristics of which we focus on in the episode.

In today's episode, we discuss one of the most popular and controversial artists of the last century, Thomas Kinkade (1958–2012). Kinkade's works often depict a pristine, idyllic, timeless past that continues to resonate with viewers. Many in the art world, however, have consistently criticized Kindade for glossing over the more problematic aspects of our collective past, as well as for his business and studio practices.