Ushering in Modernity with Manet

Multimedia artist Chris Dyer is a dynamic innovator, treating skateboards, linen, the street, NFTs and traditional canvas all as surfaces to transform. Join our hosts as they talk to Dyer about his art, his desire to paint universal truths, his experiences with entheogenic medicines, and his pursuit of personal growth.

Known for his avant-garde, conceptual art and patented ultramarine blue, Yves Klein created work during the late 1950s and early '60s that push boundaries and provoke passionately varied responses from viewers. Join our hosts as they outline Klein's most influential art and performances from two very different perspectives. 

Heralded by many as one of the most innovative contemporary abstract painters, Sam Gilliam created art over decades and decades that challenges the parameters of painting and sculpture, encouraging his viewers to reexamine their relationship to space and object. Join our hosts as they talk about this celebrated artist from their signature different perspectives.

Propelled by the Catholic Church and the Counter-Reformation, 17th century Baroque art was pious, dramatic, theatrical and emotionally intense. Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculptures typify these ideals, and showcase their maker's poetic mastery of material. Join our hosts as they discuss Bernini's sordid biography, and the key works he sculpted that will live in art history in perpetuity.

Contemporary artist, Adam Himebauch, has lived a lot of lives. He peppered the streets of Lower Manhattan with punny street art for years under the moniker Hanksy, painted colorful, pulsating murals and canvases as Adam Lucas and, now as Adam Himebauch, is tackling his most conceptual, trenchant era to date. Join our hosts as they discuss Himebauch's work and debate the merit of conceptual performance art. 

Lady Pink, born Sandra Fabara, was a prominent figure in 1980s graffiti culture, and continues to be a trailblazing woman in the field. Although the world of graffiti was heavily male-dominated and physically dangerous, Lady Pink was undeterred, painting on subway cars, trainyards and walls right alongside the men. Join our hosts as they celebrate this significant woman, her heart, courage and artivism.

AI technology is starting to transform every area of life, including the process of making art. Artists are using AI more and more in their work, some as a tool and others as an entirely new conceptual practice. Either way, art made partially, or entirely, by a program is proving to be an uncharted territory when it comes to legality and copyright protection. Join our hosts, along with technology and intellectual property attorney Ira Schwartz, as they debate AI art from all the angles. 

Grant Wood's 1930 painting "American Gothic" is one of the most recognizable images in art. Quoted, satired and parodied, this painting's legacy is undeniably enduring, but what exactly is the painting saying to its viewers? Join our hosts as they deep dive into this ubiquitous work, and others, to sort through Wood's complicated, often disparate, feelings about 1930s America and his place in it. 

Among the most ground-breaking of contemporary photographers, Cindy Sherman explores themes of fantasy, feminism, (art) history, the abject, and the self through her work. Using makeup, costumes and staged scenery to manipulate her appearance and perform as various characters, Sherman is technically the subject of her photographs; however, the Sherman we see in each image is never who Sherman truly is. Seeing her body as a storytelling tool, Sherman dissolves completely into her characters, transforming into a multitude of characters. Join our hosts as they debate her work, her conceptualism, and her indelible mark on us all. 

During the mid-19th century, there was a schism among artists between painting in a traditional manner that evoked the past, and disrupting that past and creating something innovative and new. Édouard Manet painted work that perfectly synthesizes this tension between the historical and the contemporary, forging an important path toward modernity. Join our hosts as they unravel the controversies of some of Manet's most shocking paintings.