December 11, 2024 • 66 mins
David Lee Csicsko’s distinctive artwork, stained glass, and mosaics beautify train stations, hospitals, churches, and universities across the United States. His many credits include designing the Obamas’ White House Christmas in 2012. David’s lively illustrations can also be seen in The Skin You Live In from the Chicago Children’s Museum, now in its 18th printing. Through his use of color, bold graphics and playful patterns, David Lee Csicsko celebrates the richness and diversity of life.
He's created five books for Trope Books, LGBTQ ICONS, SCIENCE PEOPLE, ICONIC COMPOSERS, FASHION ICONS and ICONIC ARTISTS.
Unlock the secrets of artistic evolution and interconnectedness as we journey through the pulsating worlds of Toulouse-Lautrec and his 1890s Paris, right through to the revolutionary pop art of Andy Warhol and the trailblazing creativity of Jean-Michel Basquiat. We promise a vibrant tapestry that connects the dots between different art movements and eras, exploring how artists like Keith Haring echoed the innovative spirit of their predecessors. From the aristocratic roots and artistic challenges of Toulouse-Lautrec to Warhol's iconic Campbell's soup cans, this episode reveals how these creators were not only shaped by their times but also became shapers of history.
Our guest, David, guides us through the intriguing life of Alexander Calder, whose engineering precision transformed the art world with his kinetic mobiles. Discover how Calder's encounters with the likes of Picasso and Mondrian in 1920s Paris ignited his imagination, leading to groundbreaking creations that redefined modern art. We also uncover the fascinating journeys of surrealist artists like Remedios Varo, who defied exclusion in Paris to thrive in the vibrant artistic community of Mexico, alongside iconic figures such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.
Celebrating artists who dared to break norms, we shed light on the self-taught trailblazers who carved their unique paths, like Lee Goethe, whose artistic genius gained recognition only posthumously. The stories of these passionate creators, alongside those of iconic art innovators, invite you to connect with the personal side of art. With insight from our featured artist Cisco Kid, who shares his own creative journey, this episode not only inspires but also challenges you to see art through a new lens, where history and creativity converge to shape our world.
if you enjoyed the show be sure to check out my info:
https://app.wingcard.io/ROB3SA64
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, hello everybody.
Today is an interesting day,not your usual podcasting
experience, but it'll be fun forthose especially into art.
Oh boy, david goes on anamazing journey of telling
stories of these differentpeople in his book that he drew.
The one thing I recommend ifyou don't know who he's talking
(00:24):
about, then it's safe todefinitely try to google their
name.
I tried to get him to spellsome of them.
If you have access to chat gbt,kind of just mumble the words
and she'll figure it out, kindof thing.
But yeah, this is a really funexperience.
Longer than usual, but hey,worth it.
(00:46):
Tell me how you think in thecomments.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Have a good one, bye welcome to the josh bolton show
where we dive into interestingand inspiring conversations.
And now your host, j JoshBolton, art Club Kid of the
(01:09):
1890s.
And then, about 100 years later, you have Keith Haring and
Jean-Michel Basquiat, whobasically got their start as Art
Club Kids as well.
So there's this connection.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Okay, so there's a connection between the
relationship.
Like you said, they're notisolated little islands, right,
and?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
they're also people of their time.
Everything that they do isbecause of the time that they
lived in.
There's a real connection tothat.
They're mavericks in their timeperiod.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
No, it's insane.
They were for their time, theywere very groundbreaking, but
yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Kind of thing, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
So what were some of the artists in particular you
thought?
Were you mentioned to me theone poster artist?
That's Chalusa the trek okay,um, okay, let's go into lusa.
What was it specifically abouttheir work that really got you
going inspired to like be anartist, and stuff uh, so um, are
(02:18):
we just chatting now forbackground, or are we actually
taping?
I just turned it on becausethis is really good.
We can use this, we don't haveto.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Okay, okay, so do you want?
I sent you information about mybackground.
Did you look at that?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Mm-hmm.
Okay, yeah, but like I told youin the previous day's chat, I'm
more coming at it.
Like you tell me me and likelet it unfold all right, all
right, so.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
So basically I um, I could draw before I could walk.
I was one of those uh art kidswho, where I grew up, um, in the
1960s in northwest Indiana,which is a blue color town, if
you were the art kid you did alot of posters and so I did
posters for the school play, uh,school events, the, the red
(03:08):
cross, an uncle who was in thesteel mills and he ran for
office and I did his posters, um, when I was like 10 and uh, but
(03:28):
in probably around like 18, inthe 1870s, he only lived to be
32.
So he died.
We have to look up the math,but he died basically in 1901.
But he was from a veryaristocratic family.
They were very wealthy, theylived in the south of France,
they had a title, his parentswere first cousins and if you
(03:52):
marry your first cousin you'regoing to have some really bad
DNA.
So his whole family was verytall and elegant and when he was
young he fell walking down thesteps and his leg never really
properly healed and a year laterhe broke the other leg by
falling off of a horse.
So sadly, again because of thebad DNA, his bones didn't heal
(04:16):
properly.
So he kind of grew from thewaist up.
So he was under five feet talland his family was this tall,
elegant people, very wealthy,went to parties, went hunting,
all the things he couldn't do.
But while he was recoveringfrom these falls, uh, his mother
encouraged him to draw and hedrew in his sketchbook and he
(04:37):
had this natural drawing abilityand so, um, the mother decided
when he was in his early 20s tosend him to Paris and he studied
at a small art school where healso met fellow artist Vincent
Van Gogh, and they hang outtogether.
(04:58):
And then he also met a modelwho was posing for the school,
whose name was name was suzannevaledon, who later he winds up
having a, a close, intimaterelationship.
They were together for like twoyears.
Um, he also, uh, was a, was aninventor of, of, of this style,
and um he, so he went to the, tothe bars and the clubs and the
(05:21):
cabarets of paris which werealso in it, which were all in
the same area, an area known asPigalle, and, um, he told the
people at, uh, this famousnightclub called the Moulin
Rouge that he would love to makea poster for them.
He did and it sort of was putup all over town and, uh, it
(05:42):
just was a great success forthis nightclub.
And then he got a studio um andworked there.
He did paintings, he did, hedid drawings, he but he's mostly
known for posters and he madethe poster become an art form.
Uh.
And then, uh, he becameromantically involved with
suzanne veledon, who could drawvery naturally.
(06:05):
She was not aristocratic, shewas always out of money.
Her mother was a poorwasherwoman and she dropped out
of school to become an artistmodel.
She had this amazing red hair.
She also was amused to artistsfrom the French Impressionists,
like Renoir.
He painted her several times.
(06:26):
She had this amazing red hair.
There are some very famouspaintings that she's in, and one
there's a famous painting byToulouse-Lautrec of a bareback
rider and she was the model forthat because she had worked in
the circus but fell and thenhurt her back and then basically
earned a living being a modelfor these artists and he really
encouraged her to keep drawing.
(06:47):
And then he said you know, youshould paint, and she was afraid
to paint because she didn'thave training.
So he talked to a fellow artistwho was older, edgar Degas, who
recognized her abilities and hetook her under his wing.
She kind of learned painting bypainting, alongside with Edgar
Degas, and they had this amazinglife.
(07:11):
Sadly, the life of a club kid isfilled and wrought with
problems.
There's all these to opium, butalso he was the life of the
(07:31):
party and he also this is alsothe early days of photography
and so he would go to a placewhere one could smoke opium and
he would get inventive, reallyinventive, and sometimes he
would dress in drag or he woulddress in a kimono.
His art is very inspiredcompositionally by the fact that
(07:52):
the doors to trading in theEast had just opened, so things
were being imported from Japaninto Paris, and that's when he
was aware of Japanesecomposition, which he then
incorporated into his head.
But there's all these reallygreat pictures of him dressed as
a geisha, dressed as a woman,dressed as a clown, dressed as
(08:12):
Pierrot, a famous French clowncharacter.
He was very active, but thenthe life and being so, so small,
anyway, he got sick, wound up,collapsing, had sort of a
nervous breakdown.
But to prove that he was well,he drew pictures of horses that
(08:33):
he loved and they released himand then he got sick again and
then, sadly, he passed away atlike age 32.
Wow.
But even though he was ofdiminutive size, he's considered
the father of modern art andalso a giant among artists.
And what's interesting abouthis art is that it's very
(08:54):
drawing based.
It's not painterly in the waythat previous painters had
painted, he's really kind ofusing the brush to draw and
apply the way you would withpastels or colored chalk or
colored pencil.
Anyway, he's a fascinatingfigure.
And then there's thisconnection, the fact that he
(09:14):
earned his living making art andposters for these cabarets.
In the same way that in the late1970s Keith Haring goes to New
York, jean-michel Basquiat goesto New York, they both are club
kids who create art that wasused in these nightclubs and
that's how they earn theirliving.
So there's this through line ofplaces that artists can go and
(09:37):
find places to work, and Imyself did the logo of a famous
club in Chicago when I was in myearly 20s that just closed
after its 40th anniversary.
It was called Berlin and it wasa very famous bar for
alternative types and a placefor sort of visual misfits to
hang out and have a great time.
(09:57):
And I did a lot of art for thatnightclub.
I created the logo, which was acrazy looking guy holding a
martini glass with bulging eyes,and then I did art for various
events that they had.
So we're all connected.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Right, I'm looking up the logo for that one.
That's cool.
That's a really cool dude.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah and thanks, and I also designed the lettering.
It was all cut out of black andwhite contact paper, which was
a style that I invented after Iwent to art school.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
That's really cool.
I like it.
That's a shame it didn't makeit though.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
It had a long, long life.
It had a very long life, but wewere all shocked when it closed
.
Even the New York Times wroteabout it.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Oh, I bet, Yeah't see if it's 40 years, that's
definitely a a pillar of thatarea yeah, um.
So what other things did you do?
Um, that also connects to theartist that you drew the the 50
different uh heads for your bookso I um, I have two nicknames
for myself.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
one is I'm the art handyman, because I can work,
for I'm very fortunate that Ican.
I design mosaics, I designlarge stained glass windows, I
design books, I create logos, Ipainted murals, so I'm very
lucky that what I do is veryadaptable.
And the other nickname I havefor myself is that I'm a visual
(11:24):
detective, and so with thesepictures I'm describing the
artists that I'm drawing, butI'm giving you suggestions
visually, of what their artlooks like.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
So within each picture.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Yes, so like, for example, the image that I did of
Alexander Calder, americanartist who invented the mobile.
His head becomes the base andyou can see there are shapes
floating around.
That you totally get it.
And he was not a broodingartist, he was a happy-go-lucky
fellow.
He kind of looked like a reallytough teddy bear.
(12:02):
He was kind of burly.
He's usually frowning in a lotof pictures, but he was quite
friendly and he made theseamazing things that were very,
very playful.
So, uh, he uh.
If we'd like, we can talk abouthim now yeah, let's go into it
okay, so, uh, alexander calderum was american.
(12:24):
He was from Philadelphia.
His grandfather created thestatue of Penn on the top of the
Capitol building ofPhiladelphia William Penn and
then his father was an artist,his mother was an artist.
He had natural abilities.
(12:45):
He went to engineering school,I think.
He went to Carnegie Mellon andthen he married.
He was a privileged so backthen people would go to Paris,
and so he went to Paris in the1920s and became friends with
all the greats.
He became friends with Picasso.
He was friends with GertrudeStein and Alice B Toklas, who
were collectors of modern artand the avant-garde.
(13:09):
They knew everybody, he and hiswife, and they went and visited
Mondrian, who was a Dutchartist who traditionally started
out painting landscapes, andthen he got really interested in
creating these sort of grids ofstrong black lines that kind of
look like modernist stainedglass windows, but just with
(13:30):
squares and these arrangements.
But instead of using a ruler, heactually very painstakingly by
hand painted these straightlines, which would take a really
long time, and he also usedbasically primary colors.
The primary colors are red,yellow and blue, um, and he also
used black and white, and so,uh, calder and his wife went
(13:52):
over to visit and he showed himthe new paintings, and calder
was so excited he said you know,if you made these move, they
would be really fantastic.
And uh, mondrian said I don'twant to make paintings that move
, you've got a studio, you makepaintings that move.
And so then he went home andinvented the mobile, which was
shapes that he cut out of metaland then fastened them with
(14:15):
wires to rods and then arrangedthem very carefully so they
would float in space.
So what he did was truly no onehad ever done anything like
this before.
It was totally revolutionary tosort of have this sort of
something that crosses the linefrom painting and sculpture and
movement together to create themobile.
(14:38):
And then another buddy of hiswas Miro, who was a Spanish
artist who was in charge ofpicking the artist to work on a
World's Fair.
That was in Paris in the 30s,just before the outbreak of
World War II, and also when soPicasso was invited to draw.
(14:58):
And about this time thefascists had bombed a small town
called Guernica in themountains of Spain and innocent
children and women were killedby these bombs that were dropped
.
And so he did this enormouspainting, which is the biggest
anti-war painting in existence.
It's.
(15:18):
It's incredibly big, it's like75 feet by by, 15 feet tall, and
it's just of the pain andanguish, but it's done in a very
modern way.
So there are like horses thatare screaming and women that are
screaming and holding theirdead children.
And the other artist, who wasalso from Spain to exhibit at
the Spanish pavilion in Paris,created something that was
(15:40):
classical, and Nero, the Spanishartist who was in charge of
picking the art, said no, no, no, we want something modern.
So he asked his buddy,alexander Calder, to create a
fountain.
Well, calder, being theinventive guy that he was,
decided I'm not going to make afountain that has water.
My fountain will have mercury,liquid mercury in it.
(16:02):
So he created this steelsculpture that kind of looks
like an alien, that's a lobster,it's very strange looking.
And instead of water flowingthrough it, mercury flowed
through the sculpture and justacross the way was the giant.
You can find photos of this andyou'll see Guernica is in the
(16:23):
back.
So again these are all theseartists who were mixing and
hanging out with each other,sharing ideas.
Paris is the hotbed ofcreativity in the 1920s and
1930s, before World War IIstarts, where everything halts
and all creativity really comesto an end.
Once the Germans, the Nazis,invade Paris, everything comes
(16:45):
to a halt and people flee.
We all know how horrible WorldWar II was, so it affects
everything.
And then Calder came back home,kept making art and just was
inventive and inventive.
Also, he made cool knives andforks and platters.
He did weavings.
He designed jewelry.
(17:06):
Again, because of hisfriendship with all these famous
people, peggy Guggenheim, afterthe war, starts her own art
museum in Venice and he designeda headboard for her, as well as
mobile silver jewelry that thatwhen the wearer would wear it
these earrings they would floatum below their ears and move was
(17:30):
it like on fish line orsomething.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So you it looked, it wasn't officially it was like
wires, wires in wires okay,that's really cool, though I
didn't realize he was the onethat introduced, like the
dangling part of a earring well,he just took it further, he
made it intellectual and he madeit more complex.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I mean, there already was dangling earrings, but his
moved on purpose.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Oh, that's really cool.
That's really cool.
What else happened with him?
What other people did heinteract with in your own book?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
uh well, so, um, we describe him as as, as an artist
who ran away to join the circus.
So early on he built thiscircus out of with cloth and
wire and made figures, dancers,trapeze artists, and the whole
thing could fit into a suitcase,and then he would open it up
(18:28):
and make it move.
There are films of him buildingit that you can see if you
Google Calder Circus.
It's pretty incredible, but hejust constantly was inventing
things all the time.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
So yeah, he was never satisfied.
Once he made something he hadto go make another, one kind of
thing.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I wouldn't say he wasn't satisfied.
I would say that he waspropelled by his creativity.
He was constantly beinginventive.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
He was an artist.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
And so he constantly was making things, but he was
also breaking the rules in theway that Picasso broke the rules
by introducing cubism andabstract figurative painting and
his various styles.
Picasso was a rule breaker,toulouse-trec was a rule breaker
, calder was a rule breaker andit's like a springboard that
(19:18):
other people saw and they kindof opened the doors for other
artists to be more experimentalof open the doors for other
artists, to be more experimental, would you say.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
For most, if not all of the artists had a tendency to
be the air quote, rule breakerkind of thing in your book in
most cases, yes, but someartists, you know, were very,
very quiet.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
They were not wild people.
Some, some like like mondrian,was a very um, soft-spoken man,
um, lived a very strongaesthetic life.
He only wore certain colors, hearranged his apartments.
He was really inspired by jazz.
Eventually he comes and helived in New York until he died,
(19:58):
after he left the Netherlandsand then he lived in Paris.
But then artists are also, like,sometimes not let into certain
societies.
So there was a Spanish womannamed Remedios Vero and she was
very talented, came to to leftSpain, came to Paris, saw the
(20:23):
work of surrealists likeSalvador Dali and others and was
really inspired by surrealism.
But the surrealist group wasvery macho and didn't really
approve of the idea of womenbeing artists, so she wasn't
really allowed to be in.
And so she went back to Spainand worked as an artist and as
an illustrator for advertisingcompanies back in the 30s.
(20:46):
And then she came back to Parisand then World War II started
and the Spanish Civil Warstarted.
So if you were a Spaniard andyou had left Spain, you couldn't
get back in.
So she was smuggled out andwound up in Mexico where
eventually she met like-mindedwomen like herself who were
super creative.
And so there were about four orfive women who were either
(21:10):
expats in Mexico, in Mexico City, either from England or from
Spain or from Paris, who wereher pals and they kind of went
off and did their own thing.
But her paintings are reallyextraordinary.
I keep thinking that high schoolstudents would love her work
because it's filled with so muchdetail and there's this sense
(21:32):
of mystery I was showing apainting of hers to a friend of
mine, I said, oh, it's likeseeing a seance come to life,
that in her paintings there'salways like these sort of
windmills or wheels, and thewind is making a structure like
a little tiny castle or a turretwhere someone is writing
something.
Or one of her most amazingpaintings is an image of a woman
(21:56):
in a tiny little hut that's onstilts with the little
staircases, and then she'sfeeding the moon, the man in in
the moon, a crescent moon with aface, the milky way.
So the milky way is, um upabove her and it's being ground
into a porridge and she'sfeeding it with a spoon.
(22:17):
So she's like telling you thiswhole mystery, this whole story.
So her, all of her paintingshave a great sense of narration.
There's a story that'shappening, something is
happening.
It has a lot to do with sciencefiction, a lot to do with
imagination.
Um, they're really wonderfulpaintings and there are three
different kinds of styles goingon in them.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
um, but she's she's one of my favorites yeah, you
were telling me about thisyesterday when we were chatting.
Um, I didn't know about thestory about her being banished
from her own country.
That's interesting.
So in Mexico, was there anynuances or events that happened
to her?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
um, that, no, she was , she was, she was.
I mean, she went to mexico citybecause, you know, in mexico
you speak spanish and that washer, her, her language.
Um, but they're also mexico citywas thriving as an intellectual
center in in the 1940s and 50sokay and so a lot was happening
also um very important spanish,not not very important Mexican
(23:20):
artists who were um working umalso in Mexico city, was a
married couple, a very wildmarried couple um named Diego
Rivera and his wife was FridaKahlo.
Diego Rivera became one of themost famous muralists in Mexico
city and and um the mural hadkind of died, but he made it, he
(23:44):
reinvented it.
So you've probably seenpictures of the Sistine Chapel
in the Vatican in Rome thatMichelangelo painted, which is
this enormous ceiling that tellsstories.
And then there's the lastjudgment, which is the whole
wall in this giant chapel whichpeople adore and love, but not
(24:08):
since Michelangelo, had peoplegotten really excited about
murals.
And so Diego Rivera is from awealthy family, he's very
educated, from a wealthy family.
He's very educated.
He marries Frida.
They go to live in Paris for awhile.
There he meets Picasso, hemeets the surrealist, he meets
(24:29):
the cubist, and so he, for awhile, while he's in Paris, does
all these cubist inspiredpaintings.
Then he comes back to Mexico andthey're not very interested in
that, but there's a growingsense of nationalism.
So he starts doing these muralsum that tell the story of
mexico and mexico's past.
At the same time he gets workin the united states and he
(24:49):
comes to detroit and, um,there's an amazing mural of his
about the auto industry in atthe detroit institute of art.
Um, that he was hired to paintand that's a huge success.
That tells the story of theauto industry.
And then everyone wants him topaint things.
So he goes to California and hepaints murals in San Francisco
and then he gets this giantcommission from Rockefeller in
(25:12):
New York City.
So he goes there with his wife,but at the same time he becomes
a committed communist.
And so there are two kinds ofcommunism pure communism, which
is what he believed in, and thenthere's the communism that came
out of World War II, which isvery different.
And when Rockefeller, the bigindustrialist American rich guy,
(25:39):
saw this, he was freaked outand fired him.
So he went back to Mexico andthen lived there until he died.
But he was a giant man and hiswife, frida, was very tiny and
diminutive.
But when Frida was young shewas riding a bus and was in a
bus accident and it shatteredher pelvis.
(26:01):
So she was unable to havechildren and she had to wear
these corsets for the rest ofher life.
But she also embraced sort ofthe national folk costume of
Mexico and so she wore longvelvet dresses and sort of
peasant blouses.
And she's famous for doing thesevery intense, imagined
self-portraits uh, picture ofher as a deer running a lot of
(26:26):
um, a lot of catholicism showsup in her work.
Where people are bleeding,there's the sacred heart, um,
there's.
There's an image she did of thetwo fridas where she's painting
and like her twin sister.
She didn't have a twin sister,this is her imagination, but
she's very much a surrealist andshe had pet monkeys.
(26:46):
They lived in what was known asthe Blue House, this gorgeously
painted Blue House.
But she suffered intenselybecause of this accident that
she had when she was young andsadly she died early on.
But she's become so um like.
Her popularity is bigger thanit's ever been.
It just keep.
Every year when they have anexhibit of frida kahlo, people
(27:08):
show up in droves to see it andin some ways her shadow um
surpasses her husband, who wasthe most famous artist of mexico
, but now she's really thoughtof as a great master.
Even though his work is stillmarvelous.
It just sort of doesn't attractthe same attention and doesn't
have the mystery that her pieceshave.
(27:29):
People love Frida Kahlo's work.
They're both in the book.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
That's awesome.
So you touched on somethingspecific.
I'd like you to explain alittle better.
You said the mystery of the artis what compels people.
What specifically, when youmean the mystery of it, is what
you're trying to explain?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So her pictures are very mysterious, looking.
There's a strong sense ofimagination.
Again, there's this sense ofnarration.
When you look at a Frida Kahlopainting, it looks like she's
telling you a story, but they'realso very mysterious and all of
that, I think, captivatespeople's imaginations and people
(28:14):
are really compelled to look ather paintings.
And also the fact that she wasin a great deal of pain, but she
was an artist and she feltcompelled to draw and paint all
the time.
She was always working, evensometimes in bed.
There are these pictures of herpainting, a painting from her
bed or in a wheelchair.
It's really an extraordinarylife and an amazing woman, very
(28:38):
strong and very powerful withher visual sense of identity.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
That's awesome.
Yeah, I just looked up some ofher stuff.
That is a very unique stylethat she has.
It's a heads up, David.
By the way, I just got thenotification.
I got 10 minutes to only sendyou a new link, so we can
continue.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Sure, you want to just talk about three more
artists link so we can continue.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Uh, sure you want to just talk about three more
artists?
Okay, yeah, uh, we got 10minutes so I will open.
Um, actually, when this oneends, it'll close and kick us.
Then just click the link againand come back in okay, you got
it so I'll cut all that out.
Um, yeah, let's go into onemore artist.
Uh, real quick.
Um of the the.
How much time do we have?
(29:23):
We got like eight ish minutesbefore it kicks up.
Okay, that's right click thelink again and just come back on
it uh.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
So another artist who is new and emerging and very
popular um is visa butler, whois an african-amerAmerican woman
who her paintings are made asquilts.
She does these intense, almostphotographic-like but in crazy
color combinations, sort oftelling stories of Black history
(29:54):
or showing just sort ofwonderful imagery with finely
dressed African-Americans.
Sometimes they're wearingsomething that's new and
sometimes her clothing that sheputs the people in reflects an
older generation or a sense ofgrandeur, like the Gilded Age,
(30:15):
like the 1890s.
But she always draws AfricanAmericans as part of her art.
But what makes it sofascinating is it's done as a
quilted painting.
She has this amazing sewingmachine that can turn in any
direction.
It's basically if you imaginedyou had a bunch of fabric and
(30:40):
your sewing machine was like thesize of a coffee can that you
can move it in any direction andyou can change the color of the
threads very easily.
Her art is totally needs to belooked at.
It's very celebrated now.
It's rather extraordinary andwonderful.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yeah, that's definitely one.
When I, when I edit this, I'mgoing to add it in the beginning
that when you listen todifferent artists, look them up
on google while you're listeningto this, if you can, because it
helps, like seeing it andhearing you tell the story too
yeah yeah, that's that's where Ilooked her up right now.
That's where I'm like yes, itreally is.
Just it's a quilt, but it looksvery well done.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
It looks like a painting yeah, they, they
totally look painted but they'renot.
If you look, it's all made ofamazing pieces of fabric.
And also she works with someoneum in uh in the netherlands
that makes these um batik andshe, she creates the patterns
and they, they produce it in avariety of colors and they're
(31:38):
very intricate.
They also sort of celebrate umafrican fabrics, um that she
pulls, but she also creates herown with images of birds and
fans and money, all kinds ofthings that's super cool.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, I like her first one.
If you google it, it's actuallya photo of her and then um one
of her quotes behind her, soshe's newer in the she's a
contemporary artist who'sworking today.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Um, she went to uh howard university, uh, which is
the famous african-american umcollege, and there, uh, she was
aware of what she calls candycolor.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Candy color.
Candy color.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
That they're keyed up bright colors.
She refers to them as candycolors.
So she uses all these likebright colors, like bright pink,
purples and blues and lime,greens and yellows, very high
keyed up color.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Is it more like bright the eye is better?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
no-transcript.
(35:44):
So I think we summed up.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Corita.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
You want to talk about Corita Kent.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
No sorry.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
I think we finished talking about Beeson Butler,
didn't we?
Speaker 3 (35:59):
That is correct.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
yes, Hold on.
Let me just turn off this call.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Your mic just suddenly got really soft.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Can you hear me?
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Yeah, much better now .
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Okay.
Andy Warhol Okay, I was goingto say we should talk about Andy
Warhol next, because he'ssomeone people will know.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
So Andy Warhol is a really amazing and probably the
most famous artist in the world.
Um, his popularity is is hugeand continues to grow um all the
time.
Uh, andy Warhol was a shy kid,uh, growing up um in Pittsburgh.
Uh, his mother was a devoutByzantine Catholic.
(36:42):
They went to church all thetime.
He was very sickly as a childand he looked at movie magazines
as a kid.
Of the famous movie stars backin the day like Marilyn Monroe
and Katharine Hepburn and CaryGrant and all of the sort of
like classic movie stars.
(37:05):
He goes to art school, then hemoves to New York and gets a job
doing fashion illustration forthe fancy department stores in
New York, like Bergdorf, goodmanand Henry Bendel, and he just
kind of keeps drawing and uhdoes these amazing drawings that
uh are having a very specialkind of look to them.
(37:28):
They're they're done with ablot, with blotter paper that he
would draw it and then blot thepaper and then he would take
the leftover part to keepworking with the rest of the
drawing.
Eventually he has this ideathat so his famous thing for
saying is everyone, everyonewill be famous for 15 minutes.
(37:48):
So he is a pop artist and soother artists like Roy
Lichtenstein, who looked atcomics and made paintings based
on on comics that were either inthe Sunday newspapers, when you
would get the comic section, orinspired by comic books like
superheroes.
He kind of follows along withthis, but then he looks at
(38:12):
everyday objects and findsbeauty in an everyday object.
So one of his famous earlythings is he recreated the
Brillo box.
Brillo was a household cleanerlike Comet Cleanser, but it was
Brillo, and he made these boxesout of wood and then silk
(38:34):
screened his cutout version of aBrillo box and reassembled them
.
And in the gallery you sawthese boxes of Brillo, but they
weren't cardboard boxes, theywere hand-silk screened, made
out of plywood boxes.
Then he finds fascination withthe everyday object, something
as simple and as common as a canof Campbell's soup, which every
(38:56):
kid grew up drinking or havingtomato soup from Campbell's
Super popular it was, it wascheap, it was a canned good and
in the 50s and 60s moms andparents liked the ease of making
dinner out of a can, um.
(39:16):
And so he looks at these, atthese Campbell soup cans, and
creates, um, these largesilkscreen prints, uh, based on
Campbell soup graphics, but hehand cuts it and makes and
silkscreens them, um, and thatkind of really took off, uh.
And then he looks at um,remembering how much he loved
(39:39):
movie stars.
He starts to take these.
He looks at a newspaperphotograph or a photograph from
a magazine and he Xeroxes abunch of times.
So by copying and recopyingusing a commercial copier like a
Xerox machine or a photocopier,he keeps playing with it until
(39:59):
if you take a piece of Xerox andyou keep making Xeroxes from
other copies, you lose and addthings.
So he then blows that up, burnsit onto a silkscreen,
silkscreens it in black and thenadds color to it.
So you have the famous imagesof Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth
(40:20):
Taylor.
Then he also looked at the newsand it's the time of race riots
in the 60s, a time of socialchange, tension in the United
States.
So he looks at these horrificpictures of race riots and blows
them up and then makes art outof it.
He also looks at car crashesthat he sees in newspapers and
(40:44):
blows that up, makes that into apiece of art.
The same thing with um, theelectric chair, um, and and
famously, uh, the nation was inlove with, uh, John F Kennedy.
They were also really in lovewith Jackie Kennedy, and when
Kennedy was assassinated helooked at Newscrew photographs
(41:05):
and turned that into a wholeseries, including the grieving
Jackie Kennedy at Kennedy'sfuneral.
He made all of this into art.
So what's interesting is thatit's a mirror and a record of
the time we lived in back then.
But he's made changes.
He's blown it out of proportion.
He's used the commercial toolsin the same way that
(41:28):
Toulouse-Lautrec made commercialposters for nightclubs and
cabarets in the 1890s in Paris.
Andy Warhol is just embracingthe world he lives in and making
it into art and this causesthis crazy change in the art
world.
So until he comes along, therewas a movement called abstract
(41:51):
expressionism, which is verygrungy and very aggressive kind
of paintings.
But he turns it into pop art.
He's using popular referenceslike a Campbell's soup can or a
Brillo box, and he kind of takesthe world by storm.
And then he starts his ownmagazine called Interview
(42:12):
Magazine, where he gets to hangout with all the people that he
admired a long time ago.
But he's a very shy, shy, shy,uh gay man who is hiding um.
At a time when gay people werenot quite so welcomed he was
even shunned by fellow artists,uh, like robert russianberg and
jasper johns, who were a gaycouple, but they were like the
(42:35):
tough straight guys.
He was very much kind of a shyfeminine man who had bad skin,
wore makeup to hide the bad skin, and then is he was losing his
hair.
So he wore these wigs all thetime, um, so he could be
glamorous in the way that he wasmaking these what he thought
were glamorous.
And then he becomes friendswith all the who's who of the
(42:55):
time, and um was constantlyhanging out with fashion
designers like Halston and LizaMinnelli and goes to parties
with Elizabeth Taylor, and so hehas this amazing life.
But he's a completelyself-invented human.
He did not come from money, hedid not come from privilege.
(43:18):
He got the door open by his ownbrilliance and his own way of
being just so inventive.
So he's a really fascinatingguy.
And then, also on the cover ofthe book, is Jean-Michel
Basquiat.
Andy Warhol at this time isquite a bit older.
He's in his 50s and Basquiat isin his early 20s and they start
(43:39):
hanging out together.
50s and Basquiat is in hisearly 20s and they start hanging
out together and and um, andyWarhol says, why don't we do
some large paintings together?
So they do these really largepaintings where Andy Warhol um
has his team of assistants umcreate things like the.
The Pegasus logo from an oldgas company, um is repeated on
(44:00):
these giant canvases that aremaybe like 12 feet by eight feet
high or 14 feet wide by 10 feettall.
And then he does it very, verycarefully.
And then Basquiat, who was likethis pure raw talent, just
draws really quickly with withpaint, just squeeze out of the,
out of the tube he doesSometimes he doesn't even bother
(44:21):
mixing it, just uses the colorthat he finds and creates these
amazing, very um, like a tempestin a teapot kind of thing,
these very tumultuous um, veryinteresting um kind of imagery
that didn't exist in the fineart world.
It's raw, it looks very muchlike work that a high school kid
(44:42):
might make or somebody who is,but also, but he comes from the
sort of a graffiti background,um, and and so all of that is
sort of coexisting with with thecontrast of what Andy Warhol
does.
Um and around the same time, umcoming up is is an amazing
artist named Keith Haring, whohe and his dad love drawing,
(45:05):
like Disney cartoons and Batmancomics.
When he was a kid.
He goes to school, drops out,goes to art school, drops out
and starts drawing on thesubways and making art for the
various big dance clubs in NewYork in the late 70s and early
80s.
Big dance clubs in in new yorkin the in the late 70s and early
(45:25):
80s.
And um, he kind of eventuallytakes the world by storm by
drawing in the subway.
It's like covered on the news.
He's this novelty, he's the newkid in town, um, but he's a
contemporary of of warhol andand basquiat um, and basquiat
dated madonna for for for ashort hot minute.
I mean, these guys got around,they interacted, they were the
Toulouse track of the 1890s, butnow they're doing it in the
(45:48):
late 1970s and early 80s.
And then sadly, aids comes alongand Keith Haring sadly died of
AIDS as a young man.
But before he died he becamereally famous and traveled
(46:11):
around the world and also dealtwith difficult subjects like
apartheid in Africa and alsomade posters that were basically
made in anger at how horriblethe Reagan administration was
and not sort of letting medicinebe available or even being
researched.
So there again, basquiat is aperson of his time.
Toulouse-trec is a person ofhis time, the 1890s.
(46:33):
Kiering is making art that isboth angry and comical at the
same time with his like crawlingbabies and people break dancing
.
Um, he's really a fascinatingguy and sadly his life is cut
short.
But what's really fascinatingis that what both uh, basquiat
(46:53):
and, um, keith Haring did no onehad done this kind of work.
They really kind of changed art.
It made it stand on its headand also just was so different,
like they're real mavericks oftheir time.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Yeah, honestly, it sounds silly and I probably have
heard it.
I didn't even know Warhol was agay man.
That's where, like hearing thatI'm like wow, I didn't know.
That Makes a lot more sense now.
It was hidden for a gay man.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
That's where, like hearing, that I'm like wow, I
didn't know.
That makes a lot more sense.
It was, it was.
It was hidden for a long time.
Um uh, his friends knew.
Um uh.
There's a very good documentarycalled the Andy Warhol diaries
that Netflix put out about twoyears ago.
That's worth watching becauseit tells this whole history and
it's really fascinating okay,I'll have to definitely look
(47:40):
that up.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Yeah, that was interesting for me.
I mean, I always knew, like,the way he did things.
It was very different, veryedgy I think, but I didn't
realize he was that edgy duringthat time.
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
Now, one thing, as we've beengoing on this wonderful journey
I've been curious about for artgeneral is it for an artist to
(48:02):
intentionally push theboundaries to make society
uncomfortable?
Is it worth the risk of beingalienated and not getting normal
jobs in your view?
Or art should be expressed theway the artist sees it, no
matter what the consequences are?
Speaker 2 (48:20):
Well, we all have to survive.
We also have to pay our rent,we need warm clothes, we need
food.
An artist does what he can tosurvive.
Some artists they catch on veryquickly.
They're very fortunate.
Other artists can suffer andstruggle their whole time and it
really depends upon theindividual.
(48:40):
There's been a field which wassometimes called outsider art.
Now it's more calledself-taught art.
But the artists who didn't goto school, didn't go to an art
academy, didn't go to a college,just was compelled to draw.
(49:01):
It was within them.
There's a whole bunch ofamazing self-taught artists that
now are getting recognized asbeing important and the book
features several of them.
There is a woman from Algeriawho inspired both Picasso and
(49:23):
Matisse.
She actually did these reallygreat, very loose paintings of
exotic women and birds.
And then a woman in Paris sawher work, fell in love with it,
brought her to Paris and gaveher an exhibit.
And both Picasso and Matissesaw her work and they were quite
(49:45):
changed by it.
They were very inspired andthen she wanted to.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
What's her name so I can look it up.
What's her name?
Speaker 2 (49:54):
I'm looking it up right now.
It's not a name that flows offthe top of my, flows out of my
tongue very easily, but I'mgetting there.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
It's okay.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Her name is Baya.
It's a really hard name topronounce, baya, medahede.
(50:32):
You're going to have to look uphow to pronounce it, but it's
Bayaics.
And so picasso would paint oneand then she would do the rest
of them.
There'd be like an edition of,say, 50.
If he made a bowl or he made apicture, she would paint the
rest of them um, so she was thatgood at copying his style, kind
of thing um well, she was justvery intuitive to this natural
ability, never went to school.
Then she leaves, goes back toalgeria, marries this guy
(50:56):
doesn't paint at all for like 30years, has a bunch of kids, he
dies and then she goes back topainting.
But she's really a fascinating,fascinating character uh that
would be one.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
I will have to look up her name I can't even sound
phonics.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
I can't find it uh, so so to her name is spelled,
last name is m-a-h-i-e-d-d-i-n-eall right.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
Oh, so that was a little fast for me, but, like I
said, I'll look her up laterokay, well, when you look, at
the pdf you can read about her.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
And then another self-taught artist that I knew
was a man who called himself MrImagination.
His real name was WilliamWormack.
Gregory Wormack was his name,not William.
William was his brother.
Gregory Wormack was anAfrican-American man who grew up
(52:02):
on the south side of Chicagoand wanted to stand out.
So one day he was walkingaround the beach and picked up a
big log and carried it aroundto get noticed.
And then he started collectingold paintbrushes big
paintbrushes you would paintyour house with and turned them
into characters.
He used molding clay andplaster of Paris and would turn
them into little figurativeobjects.
And eventually he kept makingthese things with bottle caps
(52:25):
and carving things out ofsandstone and he just totally
would let people come into hishouse and buy something
necklaces, little smallsculptures, paintbrush heads.
Eventually he got noticed.
His work was being shown ingalleries, but he worked really
hard, like all night long andwas a self-taught artist.
(52:48):
Who his studio?
He didn't have have a studio.
He did it all in a studioapartment so that his workspace
was a piece of plywood on hisbed and then when it's time to
go to bed he would move theplywood and then sleep on the
bed and um.
Extraordinary artist whoidentified and felt that he was
a long last, long lost pharaohfrom e Egypt.
(53:09):
He always identified with thepharaohs of Egypt but he made
lots of pyramids.
But the work is really quitefascinating and so to draw him,
because I knew him, I drew himas one of his creations.
But I looked at photographs ofMr Imagination, who was a warm
and friendly guy and whenever hewould see you he would say the
(53:30):
same thing Well, how are you,young man?
And he would give you a big hugor a big handshake.
He was quite tall.
He's like six foot five talland skinny, um and uh.
For the portrait of him, I drewhim as one of his characters,
uh, as a paintbrush headed.
So, um, hopefully you can lookat it.
(53:51):
Um, I can send you an image.
You can share it with yourlisteners if you like.
But he's a really fascinatingguy who, sadly, um had a hard
life.
Uh, at the end of his life hewas invited to Bethlehem,
pennsylvania, where the mayorgave him a home and he taught
art to little kids.
Uh, he went to Paris.
He went to Venice, um, uh, hewent to paris.
(54:13):
He went to venice, um, but hehad some health problems that no
one knew about and, sadly, umdied, uh, in a hospital with
with a terrible infection.
But, um, he is dearly loved.
Mr imagination, uh, he, it wasthe heart of chicago art.
And there was another woman,very opposite of Mr Imagination,
her name was Lee Godey, whostarted making art because she
(54:37):
had a lot of trauma in her life.
She was a woman who grew upvery privileged, married a man,
he was a Christian scientist.
They had two children.
One child got sick and thendied because they didn't take
him to the doctor, because theChristian scientists at that
(54:58):
time didn't believe in medicine,and so another child died and
she had a daughter who then wasput up for adoption and she
basically had a breakdown andthen wound up as a bag lady on
the street making art andhanging out with the art
students at the School of theArt Institute of Chicago.
And she would paint on windowshades, she would buy prime
(55:20):
canvas at the art supply storeand she did these, her idea of a
very beautiful woman.
And she was quite the characterLike she would help in court.
She would invite people for teain the park and she would quite
the character like she wouldhelp court she would.
She would invite people for teain the park and she would show
her paintings and um, she becamequite famous and people
magazine wrote about her.
Newspaper articles were writtenabout her.
(55:42):
Um, my partner, um, collectedher work early on and when he
and I were dating we would go ondates with Lee Godi where we
would hang out on a windowsillof, like Neiman Marcus, where
there was a big bench that shecould sit on and paint and.
But life on the streets is veryhard if she would get, you know,
(56:03):
beaten up by by bad people andit was cold and she would just
make enough money to stay in acheap hotel for the night.
But she also had bad habits.
She'd been living on thestreets so these transient
hotels didn't want her becauseshe attracted mice and roaches
and all kinds of things.
(56:23):
But for the end of her life awoman started showing up, who
was her long-lost daughter, whofound out she had had a nice
life.
She was raised by the peoplewho adopted her long lost
daughter.
Who found out she had had anice life.
She was raised by the peoplewho adopted her, but when she
got married she needed to get apassport to leave the country
and she found a relative and shesaid if you want to find your
mother, she's a bag lady on thestreet.
And so she found her and took along time to gain Lee's
(56:46):
confidence.
And and then she, lee, was anolder, an older woman, so older
woman.
So she was in her 70s andliving on the street, which is
not easy in a cold place likechicago, like right now.
Yeah, I don't mind who's on theradio set, it's stupid cold,
it's so cold right now, um.
But luckily then she had anaccident.
She was taken to a hospital,she recovered and then she felt
(57:09):
comfortable and went and livedin a nursing home and sometimes
lived with her daughter.
So at the end of her life shewas warm and loved.
But she left behind this amazingart.
That was all her idea of whatsomething beautiful was.
But she identified with theFrench Impressionists.
So the French Impressionistsare Renoir and Degas and others,
(57:33):
who Monet, who painted light,bright, pretty paintings.
They were mavericks of theirtime too, because before that
painting in Paris was big andheroic, it was all scenes that
referred to Greek mythology.
But here these FrenchImpressionists are painting
(57:53):
flowers and beautiful women, butit's all kind of light touches,
and so she identified with thatperiod, not her own period, but
a period that she admired fromthe past, and so she created her
own idea of it.
There was a popular drawingdrawing um in the in the early
(58:15):
turn of the century, um known asthe gibson girl, and the gibson
girl um is this drawing of,with like a, like a big piled up
hair, um, kind of like a bun,but more, more big.
If you look up gibson girl andthen if you look at the Lee
Goatee painting, you'll see thatthe ideas came from that, that
(58:35):
her whole idea was creatingbeauty and her again she, she is
the is really the queen ofoutsider art in Chicago, and
after she died her work now goesfor a lot of money.
You can actually, if you googlelee goatee antiques road show,
you'll find me talking about leegoatee.
(58:56):
Um, we had a painting of hersand a friend of mine had tickets
to the antiques road show,which is not my favorite show,
but my partner, david, loves it,and he said you're going with
me, what are you going to take?
And I said I'll take this new,this new painting we got of lee
goatee, and so they picked me tobe on the show and so it's a
great reference.
You can see it, um, but, uh,she wanted to be a french
(59:21):
impressionist and so, um, justrecently there's an outsider art
museum, or self-taught museum,or intuitive art as it's called
it has many names now, but it'scalled Intuit in Chicago, and
Chicago has a large collectionof various self-taught artists
(59:42):
who came in and out of Chicagoor lived here.
Most often they were very poorpeople, but they created art
because they had to, they feltit was, it was burning inside
them.
They had to do it.
Anyway, there was an amazingexhibit that went to Paris,
france, and Lee Goethe wasrepresented in that exhibit.
So she didn't have this dreamin her lifetime, but 15 years
(01:00:08):
after she died, her work isbeing shown in Paris.
So it's rather an extraordinarystory.
And the thing that's cool aboutour book is that we kind of
tell you the more personal sideof the artist.
It's not an academic book byany means.
There's a strong sense ofscholarship.
Lots of research went into itand a lot of just looking at the
art and figuring out how anartist may be yeah, I bet.
(01:00:29):
So he sent me some materialyesterday.
Um, and a lot of just lookingat the art and figuring out how
an artist maybe.
Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Yeah, I bet no, as I've looked at the.
So he sent me some material.
Yesterday we, uh, we had a chatand he sent me some of his um,
his art in his book, which Irecommend you just find a copy
somehow and look at it.
It's easy you can.
Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
You can get it on amazon.
Um uh, you can buy it at anindependent art, independent
bookstore.
It's called iconic artists.
The publisher is trope T R O PE and uh, jean-michel Basquiat
is on the cover.
Uh, it's a bright blue cover.
Um I I think you would allenjoy it.
Speaker 3 (01:01:06):
It really is.
It's.
It's quite fascinating and whenyou look at it he adds layers
of mystery.
But for me I didn't know what Iwas looking at until he
explained it.
But when you go through and heexplains it better, you see it
then what he did with the artist, kind of thing.
So it's definitely worthlooking it up.
(01:01:29):
His book it's fascinating.
Is there anything else?
In particular, david, we wantto go over that I might have
missed.
Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
No, the book is intended to be for anyone, for
any age.
The publisher thinks of theseas sort of coffee table books,
sort of modestly sized coffeetable art books that they would.
That would really inspire ayounger audience.
So they're intended to be for,um, you know someone who's in
(01:01:57):
their, in their, in their teens,from 16 to to 85?
Um, it's meant for a variety ofpeople.
It's not intended to be a kid'sbook, um, but that's um, where
the marketing hey it's whateverthe marketing department says.
So, uh, this is the fifth book.
Um, first we did a book of.
(01:02:19):
Each one has 50, uh, people init.
Each one, all of the books are.
I did all the art for it.
Um, the first one was LGBTQicons, and Frida Kahlo is on the
cover of that.
The next one was Science Peoplethere's a picture of Jane
Goodall and one of her famouschimps on the cover.
Next was Composers, and itfeatures a forgotten composer
(01:02:46):
from the time of MarieAntoinette and the French court,
before the French Revolution,but his name is Chevalier de
Saint-Georges.
He was a composer who wroteoperas and ballets and
symphonies and was friends withMozart and Marie Antoinette,
queen of Paris and Queen ofFrance.
And then we did one on 50 iconsin fashion.
(01:03:08):
And then the most newest bookis Iconic Artists, and it's a
lovely series of books.
They're about $24.95 each.
It's hardback, it's beautifullyprinted and if people are
looking for a gift for a youngerperson who has an interest in
(01:03:30):
fashion or art, or or a youngerperson who has an interest in
fashion or art, or fashion ormusic, these are the books that
you would love to give as aholiday present.
Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
Definitely, and it's really good.
I'm actually I have an artistfriend.
I might pick up a copy for him.
Please do so.
It's absolutely been a magical,wonderful experience.
David, I love how you told yourstories and it was very
captivating, but I could stilllook up the artists and it just
made it more impactful hearingyour story and looking at the
(01:04:00):
artists.
Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
Thank you, thank you, thank you Josh.
Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
You're welcome.
Is there any place inparticular?
They can reach you at.
Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
You can find me on Instagram at Cisco Kid.
So my last name is Hungarian,so it's very hard to spell.
It's two pairs of CSS, which isclassic Hungarian, so it's
C-S-I-C-S-K-O-K-I-D.
I'm on Instagram there and I'malso on Facebook and
(01:04:30):
unfortunately my website is downfor reasons I don't understand,
so I'm trying to get thatremedied and then you can find
me again.
But if you, if you can spell myname, you and just google it.
Um, I've done a lot.
I've done a lot of things, fromtrain stations to, uh, I
designed all the holidaydecorations at the Obama White
(01:04:50):
House in 2012, which were largestained glass windows and
ceramics, all kinds of things.
So I'm a lucky guy.
I love drawing.
I draw every day.
Every day I wake up drawingwith a pad and pencil and then I
work on a computer, and so I'msort of a crossover artist.
But the beauty of this artist'sbook the iconic artist's book
(01:05:11):
is that the style is consistent,but it changes to go with each
artist, so it's a, it's a visualtreat and, um, I think your
audiences would love itwonderful.
Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
Thank you again.
Hello, hello everybody.
Today is an interesting day,not your usual podcasting
experience, but it'll be fun forthose especially into art.
Oh boy, david goes on anamazing journey of telling
stories of these differentpeople in his book that he drew.
The one thing I recommend ifyou don't know who he's talking
(00:24):
about, then it's safe todefinitely try to google their
name.
I tried to get him to spellsome of them.
If you have access to chat gbt,kind of just mumble the words
and she'll figure it out, kindof thing.
But yeah, this is a really funexperience.
Longer than usual, but hey,worth it.
(00:46):
Tell me how you think in thecomments.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Have a good one, bye welcome to the josh bolton show
where we dive into interestingand inspiring conversations.
And now your host, j JoshBolton, art Club Kid of the
(01:09):
1890s.
And then, about 100 years later, you have Keith Haring and
Jean-Michel Basquiat, whobasically got their start as Art
Club Kids as well.
So there's this connection.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Okay, so there's a connection between the
relationship.
Like you said, they're notisolated little islands, right,
and?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
they're also people of their time.
Everything that they do isbecause of the time that they
lived in.
There's a real connection tothat.
They're mavericks in their timeperiod.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
No, it's insane.
They were for their time, theywere very groundbreaking, but
yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Kind of thing, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
So what were some of the artists in particular you
thought?
Were you mentioned to me theone poster artist?
That's Chalusa the trek okay,um, okay, let's go into lusa.
What was it specifically abouttheir work that really got you
going inspired to like be anartist, and stuff uh, so um, are
(02:18):
we just chatting now forbackground, or are we actually
taping?
I just turned it on becausethis is really good.
We can use this, we don't haveto.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Okay, okay, so do you want?
I sent you information about mybackground.
Did you look at that?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Mm-hmm.
Okay, yeah, but like I told youin the previous day's chat, I'm
more coming at it.
Like you tell me me and likelet it unfold all right, all
right, so.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
So basically I um, I could draw before I could walk.
I was one of those uh art kidswho, where I grew up, um, in the
1960s in northwest Indiana,which is a blue color town, if
you were the art kid you did alot of posters and so I did
posters for the school play, uh,school events, the, the red
(03:08):
cross, an uncle who was in thesteel mills and he ran for
office and I did his posters, um, when I was like 10 and uh, but
(03:28):
in probably around like 18, inthe 1870s, he only lived to be
32.
So he died.
We have to look up the math,but he died basically in 1901.
But he was from a veryaristocratic family.
They were very wealthy, theylived in the south of France,
they had a title, his parentswere first cousins and if you
(03:52):
marry your first cousin you'regoing to have some really bad
DNA.
So his whole family was verytall and elegant and when he was
young he fell walking down thesteps and his leg never really
properly healed and a year laterhe broke the other leg by
falling off of a horse.
So sadly, again because of thebad DNA, his bones didn't heal
(04:16):
properly.
So he kind of grew from thewaist up.
So he was under five feet talland his family was this tall,
elegant people, very wealthy,went to parties, went hunting,
all the things he couldn't do.
But while he was recoveringfrom these falls, uh, his mother
encouraged him to draw and hedrew in his sketchbook and he
(04:37):
had this natural drawing abilityand so, um, the mother decided
when he was in his early 20s tosend him to Paris and he studied
at a small art school where healso met fellow artist Vincent
Van Gogh, and they hang outtogether.
(04:58):
And then he also met a modelwho was posing for the school,
whose name was name was suzannevaledon, who later he winds up
having a, a close, intimaterelationship.
They were together for like twoyears.
Um, he also, uh, was a, was aninventor of, of, of this style,
and um he, so he went to the, tothe bars and the clubs and the
(05:21):
cabarets of paris which werealso in it, which were all in
the same area, an area known asPigalle, and, um, he told the
people at, uh, this famousnightclub called the Moulin
Rouge that he would love to makea poster for them.
He did and it sort of was putup all over town and, uh, it
(05:42):
just was a great success forthis nightclub.
And then he got a studio um andworked there.
He did paintings, he did, hedid drawings, he but he's mostly
known for posters and he madethe poster become an art form.
Uh.
And then, uh, he becameromantically involved with
suzanne veledon, who could drawvery naturally.
(06:05):
She was not aristocratic, shewas always out of money.
Her mother was a poorwasherwoman and she dropped out
of school to become an artistmodel.
She had this amazing red hair.
She also was amused to artistsfrom the French Impressionists,
like Renoir.
He painted her several times.
(06:26):
She had this amazing red hair.
There are some very famouspaintings that she's in, and one
there's a famous painting byToulouse-Lautrec of a bareback
rider and she was the model forthat because she had worked in
the circus but fell and thenhurt her back and then basically
earned a living being a modelfor these artists and he really
encouraged her to keep drawing.
(06:47):
And then he said you know, youshould paint, and she was afraid
to paint because she didn'thave training.
So he talked to a fellow artistwho was older, edgar Degas, who
recognized her abilities and hetook her under his wing.
She kind of learned painting bypainting, alongside with Edgar
Degas, and they had this amazinglife.
(07:11):
Sadly, the life of a club kid isfilled and wrought with
problems.
There's all these to opium, butalso he was the life of the
(07:31):
party and he also this is alsothe early days of photography
and so he would go to a placewhere one could smoke opium and
he would get inventive, reallyinventive, and sometimes he
would dress in drag or he woulddress in a kimono.
His art is very inspiredcompositionally by the fact that
(07:52):
the doors to trading in theEast had just opened, so things
were being imported from Japaninto Paris, and that's when he
was aware of Japanesecomposition, which he then
incorporated into his head.
But there's all these reallygreat pictures of him dressed as
a geisha, dressed as a woman,dressed as a clown, dressed as
(08:12):
Pierrot, a famous French clowncharacter.
He was very active, but thenthe life and being so, so small,
anyway, he got sick, wound up,collapsing, had sort of a
nervous breakdown.
But to prove that he was well,he drew pictures of horses that
(08:33):
he loved and they released himand then he got sick again and
then, sadly, he passed away atlike age 32.
Wow.
But even though he was ofdiminutive size, he's considered
the father of modern art andalso a giant among artists.
And what's interesting abouthis art is that it's very
(08:54):
drawing based.
It's not painterly in the waythat previous painters had
painted, he's really kind ofusing the brush to draw and
apply the way you would withpastels or colored chalk or
colored pencil.
Anyway, he's a fascinatingfigure.
And then there's thisconnection, the fact that he
(09:14):
earned his living making art andposters for these cabarets.
In the same way that in the late1970s Keith Haring goes to New
York, jean-michel Basquiat goesto New York, they both are club
kids who create art that wasused in these nightclubs and
that's how they earn theirliving.
So there's this through line ofplaces that artists can go and
(09:37):
find places to work, and Imyself did the logo of a famous
club in Chicago when I was in myearly 20s that just closed
after its 40th anniversary.
It was called Berlin and it wasa very famous bar for
alternative types and a placefor sort of visual misfits to
hang out and have a great time.
(09:57):
And I did a lot of art for thatnightclub.
I created the logo, which was acrazy looking guy holding a
martini glass with bulging eyes,and then I did art for various
events that they had.
So we're all connected.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Right, I'm looking up the logo for that one.
That's cool.
That's a really cool dude.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah and thanks, and I also designed the lettering.
It was all cut out of black andwhite contact paper, which was
a style that I invented after Iwent to art school.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
That's really cool.
I like it.
That's a shame it didn't makeit though.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
It had a long, long life.
It had a very long life, but wewere all shocked when it closed
.
Even the New York Times wroteabout it.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Oh, I bet, Yeah't see if it's 40 years, that's
definitely a a pillar of thatarea yeah, um.
So what other things did you do?
Um, that also connects to theartist that you drew the the 50
different uh heads for your bookso I um, I have two nicknames
for myself.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
one is I'm the art handyman, because I can work,
for I'm very fortunate that Ican.
I design mosaics, I designlarge stained glass windows, I
design books, I create logos, Ipainted murals, so I'm very
lucky that what I do is veryadaptable.
And the other nickname I havefor myself is that I'm a visual
(11:24):
detective, and so with thesepictures I'm describing the
artists that I'm drawing, butI'm giving you suggestions
visually, of what their artlooks like.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
So within each picture.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Yes, so like, for example, the image that I did of
Alexander Calder, americanartist who invented the mobile.
His head becomes the base andyou can see there are shapes
floating around.
That you totally get it.
And he was not a broodingartist, he was a happy-go-lucky
fellow.
He kind of looked like a reallytough teddy bear.
(12:02):
He was kind of burly.
He's usually frowning in a lotof pictures, but he was quite
friendly and he made theseamazing things that were very,
very playful.
So, uh, he uh.
If we'd like, we can talk abouthim now yeah, let's go into it
okay, so, uh, alexander calderum was american.
(12:24):
He was from Philadelphia.
His grandfather created thestatue of Penn on the top of the
Capitol building ofPhiladelphia William Penn and
then his father was an artist,his mother was an artist.
He had natural abilities.
(12:45):
He went to engineering school,I think.
He went to Carnegie Mellon andthen he married.
He was a privileged so backthen people would go to Paris,
and so he went to Paris in the1920s and became friends with
all the greats.
He became friends with Picasso.
He was friends with GertrudeStein and Alice B Toklas, who
were collectors of modern artand the avant-garde.
(13:09):
They knew everybody, he and hiswife, and they went and visited
Mondrian, who was a Dutchartist who traditionally started
out painting landscapes, andthen he got really interested in
creating these sort of grids ofstrong black lines that kind of
look like modernist stainedglass windows, but just with
(13:30):
squares and these arrangements.
But instead of using a ruler, heactually very painstakingly by
hand painted these straightlines, which would take a really
long time, and he also usedbasically primary colors.
The primary colors are red,yellow and blue, um, and he also
used black and white, and so,uh, calder and his wife went
(13:52):
over to visit and he showed himthe new paintings, and calder
was so excited he said you know,if you made these move, they
would be really fantastic.
And uh, mondrian said I don'twant to make paintings that move
, you've got a studio, you makepaintings that move.
And so then he went home andinvented the mobile, which was
shapes that he cut out of metaland then fastened them with
(14:15):
wires to rods and then arrangedthem very carefully so they
would float in space.
So what he did was truly no onehad ever done anything like
this before.
It was totally revolutionary tosort of have this sort of
something that crosses the linefrom painting and sculpture and
movement together to create themobile.
(14:38):
And then another buddy of hiswas Miro, who was a Spanish
artist who was in charge ofpicking the artist to work on a
World's Fair.
That was in Paris in the 30s,just before the outbreak of
World War II, and also when soPicasso was invited to draw.
(14:58):
And about this time thefascists had bombed a small town
called Guernica in themountains of Spain and innocent
children and women were killedby these bombs that were dropped
.
And so he did this enormouspainting, which is the biggest
anti-war painting in existence.
It's.
(15:18):
It's incredibly big, it's like75 feet by by, 15 feet tall, and
it's just of the pain andanguish, but it's done in a very
modern way.
So there are like horses thatare screaming and women that are
screaming and holding theirdead children.
And the other artist, who wasalso from Spain to exhibit at
the Spanish pavilion in Paris,created something that was
(15:40):
classical, and Nero, the Spanishartist who was in charge of
picking the art, said no, no, no, we want something modern.
So he asked his buddy,alexander Calder, to create a
fountain.
Well, calder, being theinventive guy that he was,
decided I'm not going to make afountain that has water.
My fountain will have mercury,liquid mercury in it.
(16:02):
So he created this steelsculpture that kind of looks
like an alien, that's a lobster,it's very strange looking.
And instead of water flowingthrough it, mercury flowed
through the sculpture and justacross the way was the giant.
You can find photos of this andyou'll see Guernica is in the
(16:23):
back.
So again these are all theseartists who were mixing and
hanging out with each other,sharing ideas.
Paris is the hotbed ofcreativity in the 1920s and
1930s, before World War IIstarts, where everything halts
and all creativity really comesto an end.
Once the Germans, the Nazis,invade Paris, everything comes
(16:45):
to a halt and people flee.
We all know how horrible WorldWar II was, so it affects
everything.
And then Calder came back home,kept making art and just was
inventive and inventive.
Also, he made cool knives andforks and platters.
He did weavings.
He designed jewelry.
(17:06):
Again, because of hisfriendship with all these famous
people, peggy Guggenheim, afterthe war, starts her own art
museum in Venice and he designeda headboard for her, as well as
mobile silver jewelry that thatwhen the wearer would wear it
these earrings they would floatum below their ears and move was
(17:30):
it like on fish line orsomething.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So you it looked, it wasn't officially it was like
wires, wires in wires okay,that's really cool, though I
didn't realize he was the onethat introduced, like the
dangling part of a earring well,he just took it further, he
made it intellectual and he madeit more complex.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I mean, there already was dangling earrings, but his
moved on purpose.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Oh, that's really cool.
That's really cool.
What else happened with him?
What other people did heinteract with in your own book?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
uh well, so, um, we describe him as as, as an artist
who ran away to join the circus.
So early on he built thiscircus out of with cloth and
wire and made figures, dancers,trapeze artists, and the whole
thing could fit into a suitcase,and then he would open it up
(18:28):
and make it move.
There are films of him buildingit that you can see if you
Google Calder Circus.
It's pretty incredible, but hejust constantly was inventing
things all the time.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
So yeah, he was never satisfied.
Once he made something he hadto go make another, one kind of
thing.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I wouldn't say he wasn't satisfied.
I would say that he waspropelled by his creativity.
He was constantly beinginventive.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
He was an artist.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
And so he constantly was making things, but he was
also breaking the rules in theway that Picasso broke the rules
by introducing cubism andabstract figurative painting and
his various styles.
Picasso was a rule breaker,toulouse-trec was a rule breaker
, calder was a rule breaker andit's like a springboard that
(19:18):
other people saw and they kindof opened the doors for other
artists to be more experimentalof open the doors for other
artists, to be more experimental, would you say.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
For most, if not all of the artists had a tendency to
be the air quote, rule breakerkind of thing in your book in
most cases, yes, but someartists, you know, were very,
very quiet.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
They were not wild people.
Some, some like like mondrian,was a very um, soft-spoken man,
um, lived a very strongaesthetic life.
He only wore certain colors, hearranged his apartments.
He was really inspired by jazz.
Eventually he comes and helived in New York until he died,
(19:58):
after he left the Netherlandsand then he lived in Paris.
But then artists are also, like,sometimes not let into certain
societies.
So there was a Spanish womannamed Remedios Vero and she was
very talented, came to to leftSpain, came to Paris, saw the
(20:23):
work of surrealists likeSalvador Dali and others and was
really inspired by surrealism.
But the surrealist group wasvery macho and didn't really
approve of the idea of womenbeing artists, so she wasn't
really allowed to be in.
And so she went back to Spainand worked as an artist and as
an illustrator for advertisingcompanies back in the 30s.
(20:46):
And then she came back to Parisand then World War II started
and the Spanish Civil Warstarted.
So if you were a Spaniard andyou had left Spain, you couldn't
get back in.
So she was smuggled out andwound up in Mexico where
eventually she met like-mindedwomen like herself who were
super creative.
And so there were about four orfive women who were either
(21:10):
expats in Mexico, in Mexico City, either from England or from
Spain or from Paris, who wereher pals and they kind of went
off and did their own thing.
But her paintings are reallyextraordinary.
I keep thinking that high schoolstudents would love her work
because it's filled with so muchdetail and there's this sense
(21:32):
of mystery I was showing apainting of hers to a friend of
mine, I said, oh, it's likeseeing a seance come to life,
that in her paintings there'salways like these sort of
windmills or wheels, and thewind is making a structure like
a little tiny castle or a turretwhere someone is writing
something.
Or one of her most amazingpaintings is an image of a woman
(21:56):
in a tiny little hut that's onstilts with the little
staircases, and then she'sfeeding the moon, the man in in
the moon, a crescent moon with aface, the milky way.
So the milky way is, um upabove her and it's being ground
into a porridge and she'sfeeding it with a spoon.
(22:17):
So she's like telling you thiswhole mystery, this whole story.
So her, all of her paintingshave a great sense of narration.
There's a story that'shappening, something is
happening.
It has a lot to do with sciencefiction, a lot to do with
imagination.
Um, they're really wonderfulpaintings and there are three
different kinds of styles goingon in them.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
um, but she's she's one of my favorites yeah, you
were telling me about thisyesterday when we were chatting.
Um, I didn't know about thestory about her being banished
from her own country.
That's interesting.
So in Mexico, was there anynuances or events that happened
to her?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
um, that, no, she was , she was, she was.
I mean, she went to mexico citybecause, you know, in mexico
you speak spanish and that washer, her, her language.
Um, but they're also mexico citywas thriving as an intellectual
center in in the 1940s and 50sokay and so a lot was happening
also um very important spanish,not not very important Mexican
(23:20):
artists who were um working umalso in Mexico city, was a
married couple, a very wildmarried couple um named Diego
Rivera and his wife was FridaKahlo.
Diego Rivera became one of themost famous muralists in Mexico
city and and um the mural hadkind of died, but he made it, he
(23:44):
reinvented it.
So you've probably seenpictures of the Sistine Chapel
in the Vatican in Rome thatMichelangelo painted, which is
this enormous ceiling that tellsstories.
And then there's the lastjudgment, which is the whole
wall in this giant chapel whichpeople adore and love, but not
(24:08):
since Michelangelo, had peoplegotten really excited about
murals.
And so Diego Rivera is from awealthy family, he's very
educated, from a wealthy family.
He's very educated.
He marries Frida.
They go to live in Paris for awhile.
There he meets Picasso, hemeets the surrealist, he meets
(24:29):
the cubist, and so he, for awhile, while he's in Paris, does
all these cubist inspiredpaintings.
Then he comes back to Mexico andthey're not very interested in
that, but there's a growingsense of nationalism.
So he starts doing these muralsum that tell the story of
mexico and mexico's past.
At the same time he gets workin the united states and he
(24:49):
comes to detroit and, um,there's an amazing mural of his
about the auto industry in atthe detroit institute of art.
Um, that he was hired to paintand that's a huge success.
That tells the story of theauto industry.
And then everyone wants him topaint things.
So he goes to California and hepaints murals in San Francisco
and then he gets this giantcommission from Rockefeller in
(25:12):
New York City.
So he goes there with his wife,but at the same time he becomes
a committed communist.
And so there are two kinds ofcommunism pure communism, which
is what he believed in, and thenthere's the communism that came
out of World War II, which isvery different.
And when Rockefeller, the bigindustrialist American rich guy,
(25:39):
saw this, he was freaked outand fired him.
So he went back to Mexico andthen lived there until he died.
But he was a giant man and hiswife, frida, was very tiny and
diminutive.
But when Frida was young shewas riding a bus and was in a
bus accident and it shatteredher pelvis.
(26:01):
So she was unable to havechildren and she had to wear
these corsets for the rest ofher life.
But she also embraced sort ofthe national folk costume of
Mexico and so she wore longvelvet dresses and sort of
peasant blouses.
And she's famous for doing thesevery intense, imagined
self-portraits uh, picture ofher as a deer running a lot of
(26:26):
um, a lot of catholicism showsup in her work.
Where people are bleeding,there's the sacred heart, um,
there's.
There's an image she did of thetwo fridas where she's painting
and like her twin sister.
She didn't have a twin sister,this is her imagination, but
she's very much a surrealist andshe had pet monkeys.
(26:46):
They lived in what was known asthe Blue House, this gorgeously
painted Blue House.
But she suffered intenselybecause of this accident that
she had when she was young andsadly she died early on.
But she's become so um like.
Her popularity is bigger thanit's ever been.
It just keep.
Every year when they have anexhibit of frida kahlo, people
(27:08):
show up in droves to see it andin some ways her shadow um
surpasses her husband, who wasthe most famous artist of mexico
, but now she's really thoughtof as a great master.
Even though his work is stillmarvelous.
It just sort of doesn't attractthe same attention and doesn't
have the mystery that her pieceshave.
(27:29):
People love Frida Kahlo's work.
They're both in the book.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
That's awesome.
So you touched on somethingspecific.
I'd like you to explain alittle better.
You said the mystery of the artis what compels people.
What specifically, when youmean the mystery of it, is what
you're trying to explain?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So her pictures are very mysterious, looking.
There's a strong sense ofimagination.
Again, there's this sense ofnarration.
When you look at a Frida Kahlopainting, it looks like she's
telling you a story, but they'realso very mysterious and all of
that, I think, captivatespeople's imaginations and people
(28:14):
are really compelled to look ather paintings.
And also the fact that she wasin a great deal of pain, but she
was an artist and she feltcompelled to draw and paint all
the time.
She was always working, evensometimes in bed.
There are these pictures of herpainting, a painting from her
bed or in a wheelchair.
It's really an extraordinarylife and an amazing woman, very
(28:38):
strong and very powerful withher visual sense of identity.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
That's awesome.
Yeah, I just looked up some ofher stuff.
That is a very unique stylethat she has.
It's a heads up, David.
By the way, I just got thenotification.
I got 10 minutes to only sendyou a new link, so we can
continue.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Sure, you want to just talk about three more
artists link so we can continue.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Uh, sure you want to just talk about three more
artists?
Okay, yeah, uh, we got 10minutes so I will open.
Um, actually, when this oneends, it'll close and kick us.
Then just click the link againand come back in okay, you got
it so I'll cut all that out.
Um, yeah, let's go into onemore artist.
Uh, real quick.
Um of the the.
How much time do we have?
(29:23):
We got like eight ish minutesbefore it kicks up.
Okay, that's right click thelink again and just come back on
it uh.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
So another artist who is new and emerging and very
popular um is visa butler, whois an african-amerAmerican woman
who her paintings are made asquilts.
She does these intense, almostphotographic-like but in crazy
color combinations, sort oftelling stories of Black history
(29:54):
or showing just sort ofwonderful imagery with finely
dressed African-Americans.
Sometimes they're wearingsomething that's new and
sometimes her clothing that sheputs the people in reflects an
older generation or a sense ofgrandeur, like the Gilded Age,
(30:15):
like the 1890s.
But she always draws AfricanAmericans as part of her art.
But what makes it sofascinating is it's done as a
quilted painting.
She has this amazing sewingmachine that can turn in any
direction.
It's basically if you imaginedyou had a bunch of fabric and
(30:40):
your sewing machine was like thesize of a coffee can that you
can move it in any direction andyou can change the color of the
threads very easily.
Her art is totally needs to belooked at.
It's very celebrated now.
It's rather extraordinary andwonderful.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yeah, that's definitely one.
When I, when I edit this, I'mgoing to add it in the beginning
that when you listen todifferent artists, look them up
on google while you're listeningto this, if you can, because it
helps, like seeing it andhearing you tell the story too
yeah yeah, that's that's where Ilooked her up right now.
That's where I'm like yes, itreally is.
Just it's a quilt, but it looksvery well done.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
It looks like a painting yeah, they, they
totally look painted but they'renot.
If you look, it's all made ofamazing pieces of fabric.
And also she works with someoneum in uh in the netherlands
that makes these um batik andshe, she creates the patterns
and they, they produce it in avariety of colors and they're
(31:38):
very intricate.
They also sort of celebrate umafrican fabrics, um that she
pulls, but she also creates herown with images of birds and
fans and money, all kinds ofthings that's super cool.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, I like her first one.
If you google it, it's actuallya photo of her and then um one
of her quotes behind her, soshe's newer in the she's a
contemporary artist who'sworking today.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Um, she went to uh howard university, uh, which is
the famous african-american umcollege, and there, uh, she was
aware of what she calls candycolor.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Candy color.
Candy color.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
That they're keyed up bright colors.
She refers to them as candycolors.
So she uses all these likebright colors, like bright pink,
purples and blues and lime,greens and yellows, very high
keyed up color.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Is it more like bright the eye is better?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
no-transcript.
(35:44):
So I think we summed up.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Corita.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
You want to talk about Corita Kent.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
No sorry.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
I think we finished talking about Beeson Butler,
didn't we?
Speaker 3 (35:59):
That is correct.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
yes, Hold on.
Let me just turn off this call.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Your mic just suddenly got really soft.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Can you hear me?
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Yeah, much better now .
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Okay.
Andy Warhol Okay, I was goingto say we should talk about Andy
Warhol next, because he'ssomeone people will know.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
So Andy Warhol is a really amazing and probably the
most famous artist in the world.
Um, his popularity is is hugeand continues to grow um all the
time.
Uh, andy Warhol was a shy kid,uh, growing up um in Pittsburgh.
Uh, his mother was a devoutByzantine Catholic.
(36:42):
They went to church all thetime.
He was very sickly as a childand he looked at movie magazines
as a kid.
Of the famous movie stars backin the day like Marilyn Monroe
and Katharine Hepburn and CaryGrant and all of the sort of
like classic movie stars.
(37:05):
He goes to art school, then hemoves to New York and gets a job
doing fashion illustration forthe fancy department stores in
New York, like Bergdorf, goodmanand Henry Bendel, and he just
kind of keeps drawing and uhdoes these amazing drawings that
uh are having a very specialkind of look to them.
(37:28):
They're they're done with ablot, with blotter paper that he
would draw it and then blot thepaper and then he would take
the leftover part to keepworking with the rest of the
drawing.
Eventually he has this ideathat so his famous thing for
saying is everyone, everyonewill be famous for 15 minutes.
(37:48):
So he is a pop artist and soother artists like Roy
Lichtenstein, who looked atcomics and made paintings based
on on comics that were either inthe Sunday newspapers, when you
would get the comic section, orinspired by comic books like
superheroes.
He kind of follows along withthis, but then he looks at
(38:12):
everyday objects and findsbeauty in an everyday object.
So one of his famous earlythings is he recreated the
Brillo box.
Brillo was a household cleanerlike Comet Cleanser, but it was
Brillo, and he made these boxesout of wood and then silk
(38:34):
screened his cutout version of aBrillo box and reassembled them
.
And in the gallery you sawthese boxes of Brillo, but they
weren't cardboard boxes, theywere hand-silk screened, made
out of plywood boxes.
Then he finds fascination withthe everyday object, something
as simple and as common as a canof Campbell's soup, which every
(38:56):
kid grew up drinking or havingtomato soup from Campbell's
Super popular it was, it wascheap, it was a canned good and
in the 50s and 60s moms andparents liked the ease of making
dinner out of a can, um.
(39:16):
And so he looks at these, atthese Campbell soup cans, and
creates, um, these largesilkscreen prints, uh, based on
Campbell soup graphics, but hehand cuts it and makes and
silkscreens them, um, and thatkind of really took off, uh.
And then he looks at um,remembering how much he loved
(39:39):
movie stars.
He starts to take these.
He looks at a newspaperphotograph or a photograph from
a magazine and he Xeroxes abunch of times.
So by copying and recopyingusing a commercial copier like a
Xerox machine or a photocopier,he keeps playing with it until
(39:59):
if you take a piece of Xerox andyou keep making Xeroxes from
other copies, you lose and addthings.
So he then blows that up, burnsit onto a silkscreen,
silkscreens it in black and thenadds color to it.
So you have the famous imagesof Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth
(40:20):
Taylor.
Then he also looked at the newsand it's the time of race riots
in the 60s, a time of socialchange, tension in the United
States.
So he looks at these horrificpictures of race riots and blows
them up and then makes art outof it.
He also looks at car crashesthat he sees in newspapers and
(40:44):
blows that up, makes that into apiece of art.
The same thing with um, theelectric chair, um, and and
famously, uh, the nation was inlove with, uh, John F Kennedy.
They were also really in lovewith Jackie Kennedy, and when
Kennedy was assassinated helooked at Newscrew photographs
(41:05):
and turned that into a wholeseries, including the grieving
Jackie Kennedy at Kennedy'sfuneral.
He made all of this into art.
So what's interesting is thatit's a mirror and a record of
the time we lived in back then.
But he's made changes.
He's blown it out of proportion.
He's used the commercial toolsin the same way that
(41:28):
Toulouse-Lautrec made commercialposters for nightclubs and
cabarets in the 1890s in Paris.
Andy Warhol is just embracingthe world he lives in and making
it into art and this causesthis crazy change in the art
world.
So until he comes along, therewas a movement called abstract
(41:51):
expressionism, which is verygrungy and very aggressive kind
of paintings.
But he turns it into pop art.
He's using popular referenceslike a Campbell's soup can or a
Brillo box, and he kind of takesthe world by storm.
And then he starts his ownmagazine called Interview
(42:12):
Magazine, where he gets to hangout with all the people that he
admired a long time ago.
But he's a very shy, shy, shy,uh gay man who is hiding um.
At a time when gay people werenot quite so welcomed he was
even shunned by fellow artists,uh, like robert russianberg and
jasper johns, who were a gaycouple, but they were like the
(42:35):
tough straight guys.
He was very much kind of a shyfeminine man who had bad skin,
wore makeup to hide the bad skin, and then is he was losing his
hair.
So he wore these wigs all thetime, um, so he could be
glamorous in the way that he wasmaking these what he thought
were glamorous.
And then he becomes friendswith all the who's who of the
(42:55):
time, and um was constantlyhanging out with fashion
designers like Halston and LizaMinnelli and goes to parties
with Elizabeth Taylor, and so hehas this amazing life.
But he's a completelyself-invented human.
He did not come from money, hedid not come from privilege.
(43:18):
He got the door open by his ownbrilliance and his own way of
being just so inventive.
So he's a really fascinatingguy.
And then, also on the cover ofthe book, is Jean-Michel
Basquiat.
Andy Warhol at this time isquite a bit older.
He's in his 50s and Basquiat isin his early 20s and they start
(43:39):
hanging out together.
50s and Basquiat is in hisearly 20s and they start hanging
out together and and um, andyWarhol says, why don't we do
some large paintings together?
So they do these really largepaintings where Andy Warhol um
has his team of assistants umcreate things like the.
The Pegasus logo from an oldgas company, um is repeated on
(44:00):
these giant canvases that aremaybe like 12 feet by eight feet
high or 14 feet wide by 10 feettall.
And then he does it very, verycarefully.
And then Basquiat, who was likethis pure raw talent, just
draws really quickly with withpaint, just squeeze out of the,
out of the tube he doesSometimes he doesn't even bother
(44:21):
mixing it, just uses the colorthat he finds and creates these
amazing, very um, like a tempestin a teapot kind of thing,
these very tumultuous um, veryinteresting um kind of imagery
that didn't exist in the fineart world.
It's raw, it looks very muchlike work that a high school kid
(44:42):
might make or somebody who is,but also, but he comes from the
sort of a graffiti background,um, and and so all of that is
sort of coexisting with with thecontrast of what Andy Warhol
does.
Um and around the same time, umcoming up is is an amazing
artist named Keith Haring, whohe and his dad love drawing,
(45:05):
like Disney cartoons and Batmancomics.
When he was a kid.
He goes to school, drops out,goes to art school, drops out
and starts drawing on thesubways and making art for the
various big dance clubs in NewYork in the late 70s and early
80s.
Big dance clubs in in new yorkin the in the late 70s and early
(45:25):
80s.
And um, he kind of eventuallytakes the world by storm by
drawing in the subway.
It's like covered on the news.
He's this novelty, he's the newkid in town, um, but he's a
contemporary of of warhol andand basquiat um, and basquiat
dated madonna for for for ashort hot minute.
I mean, these guys got around,they interacted, they were the
Toulouse track of the 1890s, butnow they're doing it in the
(45:48):
late 1970s and early 80s.
And then sadly, aids comes alongand Keith Haring sadly died of
AIDS as a young man.
But before he died he becamereally famous and traveled
(46:11):
around the world and also dealtwith difficult subjects like
apartheid in Africa and alsomade posters that were basically
made in anger at how horriblethe Reagan administration was
and not sort of letting medicinebe available or even being
researched.
So there again, basquiat is aperson of his time.
Toulouse-trec is a person ofhis time, the 1890s.
(46:33):
Kiering is making art that isboth angry and comical at the
same time with his like crawlingbabies and people break dancing
.
Um, he's really a fascinatingguy and sadly his life is cut
short.
But what's really fascinatingis that what both uh, basquiat
(46:53):
and, um, keith Haring did no onehad done this kind of work.
They really kind of changed art.
It made it stand on its headand also just was so different,
like they're real mavericks oftheir time.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Yeah, honestly, it sounds silly and I probably have
heard it.
I didn't even know Warhol was agay man.
That's where, like hearing thatI'm like wow, I didn't know.
That Makes a lot more sense now.
It was hidden for a gay man.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
That's where, like hearing, that I'm like wow, I
didn't know.
That makes a lot more sense.
It was, it was.
It was hidden for a long time.
Um uh, his friends knew.
Um uh.
There's a very good documentarycalled the Andy Warhol diaries
that Netflix put out about twoyears ago.
That's worth watching becauseit tells this whole history and
it's really fascinating okay,I'll have to definitely look
(47:40):
that up.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Yeah, that was interesting for me.
I mean, I always knew, like,the way he did things.
It was very different, veryedgy I think, but I didn't
realize he was that edgy duringthat time.
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
Now, one thing, as we've beengoing on this wonderful journey
I've been curious about for artgeneral is it for an artist to
(48:02):
intentionally push theboundaries to make society
uncomfortable?
Is it worth the risk of beingalienated and not getting normal
jobs in your view?
Or art should be expressed theway the artist sees it, no
matter what the consequences are?
Speaker 2 (48:20):
Well, we all have to survive.
We also have to pay our rent,we need warm clothes, we need
food.
An artist does what he can tosurvive.
Some artists they catch on veryquickly.
They're very fortunate.
Other artists can suffer andstruggle their whole time and it
really depends upon theindividual.
(48:40):
There's been a field which wassometimes called outsider art.
Now it's more calledself-taught art.
But the artists who didn't goto school, didn't go to an art
academy, didn't go to a college,just was compelled to draw.
(49:01):
It was within them.
There's a whole bunch ofamazing self-taught artists that
now are getting recognized asbeing important and the book
features several of them.
There is a woman from Algeriawho inspired both Picasso and
(49:23):
Matisse.
She actually did these reallygreat, very loose paintings of
exotic women and birds.
And then a woman in Paris sawher work, fell in love with it,
brought her to Paris and gaveher an exhibit.
And both Picasso and Matissesaw her work and they were quite
(49:45):
changed by it.
They were very inspired andthen she wanted to.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
What's her name so I can look it up.
What's her name?
Speaker 2 (49:54):
I'm looking it up right now.
It's not a name that flows offthe top of my, flows out of my
tongue very easily, but I'mgetting there.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
It's okay.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Her name is Baya.
It's a really hard name topronounce, baya, medahede.
(50:32):
You're going to have to look uphow to pronounce it, but it's
Bayaics.
And so picasso would paint oneand then she would do the rest
of them.
There'd be like an edition of,say, 50.
If he made a bowl or he made apicture, she would paint the
rest of them um, so she was thatgood at copying his style, kind
of thing um well, she was justvery intuitive to this natural
ability, never went to school.
Then she leaves, goes back toalgeria, marries this guy
(50:56):
doesn't paint at all for like 30years, has a bunch of kids, he
dies and then she goes back topainting.
But she's really a fascinating,fascinating character uh that
would be one.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
I will have to look up her name I can't even sound
phonics.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
I can't find it uh, so so to her name is spelled,
last name is m-a-h-i-e-d-d-i-n-eall right.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
Oh, so that was a little fast for me, but, like I
said, I'll look her up laterokay, well, when you look, at
the pdf you can read about her.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
And then another self-taught artist that I knew
was a man who called himself MrImagination.
His real name was WilliamWormack.
Gregory Wormack was his name,not William.
William was his brother.
Gregory Wormack was anAfrican-American man who grew up
(52:02):
on the south side of Chicagoand wanted to stand out.
So one day he was walkingaround the beach and picked up a
big log and carried it aroundto get noticed.
And then he started collectingold paintbrushes big
paintbrushes you would paintyour house with and turned them
into characters.
He used molding clay andplaster of Paris and would turn
them into little figurativeobjects.
And eventually he kept makingthese things with bottle caps
(52:25):
and carving things out ofsandstone and he just totally
would let people come into hishouse and buy something
necklaces, little smallsculptures, paintbrush heads.
Eventually he got noticed.
His work was being shown ingalleries, but he worked really
hard, like all night long andwas a self-taught artist.
(52:48):
Who his studio?
He didn't have have a studio.
He did it all in a studioapartment so that his workspace
was a piece of plywood on hisbed and then when it's time to
go to bed he would move theplywood and then sleep on the
bed and um.
Extraordinary artist whoidentified and felt that he was
a long last, long lost pharaohfrom e Egypt.
(53:09):
He always identified with thepharaohs of Egypt but he made
lots of pyramids.
But the work is really quitefascinating and so to draw him,
because I knew him, I drew himas one of his creations.
But I looked at photographs ofMr Imagination, who was a warm
and friendly guy and whenever hewould see you he would say the
(53:30):
same thing Well, how are you,young man?
And he would give you a big hugor a big handshake.
He was quite tall.
He's like six foot five talland skinny, um and uh.
For the portrait of him, I drewhim as one of his characters,
uh, as a paintbrush headed.
So, um, hopefully you can lookat it.
(53:51):
Um, I can send you an image.
You can share it with yourlisteners if you like.
But he's a really fascinatingguy who, sadly, um had a hard
life.
Uh, at the end of his life hewas invited to Bethlehem,
pennsylvania, where the mayorgave him a home and he taught
art to little kids.
Uh, he went to Paris.
He went to Venice, um, uh, hewent to paris.
(54:13):
He went to venice, um, but hehad some health problems that no
one knew about and, sadly, umdied, uh, in a hospital with
with a terrible infection.
But, um, he is dearly loved.
Mr imagination, uh, he, it wasthe heart of chicago art.
And there was another woman,very opposite of Mr Imagination,
her name was Lee Godey, whostarted making art because she
(54:37):
had a lot of trauma in her life.
She was a woman who grew upvery privileged, married a man,
he was a Christian scientist.
They had two children.
One child got sick and thendied because they didn't take
him to the doctor, because theChristian scientists at that
(54:58):
time didn't believe in medicine,and so another child died and
she had a daughter who then wasput up for adoption and she
basically had a breakdown andthen wound up as a bag lady on
the street making art andhanging out with the art
students at the School of theArt Institute of Chicago.
And she would paint on windowshades, she would buy prime
(55:20):
canvas at the art supply storeand she did these, her idea of a
very beautiful woman.
And she was quite the characterLike she would help in court.
She would invite people for teain the park and she would quite
the character like she wouldhelp court she would.
She would invite people for teain the park and she would show
her paintings and um, she becamequite famous and people
magazine wrote about her.
Newspaper articles were writtenabout her.
(55:42):
Um, my partner, um, collectedher work early on and when he
and I were dating we would go ondates with Lee Godi where we
would hang out on a windowsillof, like Neiman Marcus, where
there was a big bench that shecould sit on and paint and.
But life on the streets is veryhard if she would get, you know,
(56:03):
beaten up by by bad people andit was cold and she would just
make enough money to stay in acheap hotel for the night.
But she also had bad habits.
She'd been living on thestreets so these transient
hotels didn't want her becauseshe attracted mice and roaches
and all kinds of things.
(56:23):
But for the end of her life awoman started showing up, who
was her long-lost daughter, whofound out she had had a nice
life.
She was raised by the peoplewho adopted her long lost
daughter.
Who found out she had had anice life.
She was raised by the peoplewho adopted her, but when she
got married she needed to get apassport to leave the country
and she found a relative and shesaid if you want to find your
mother, she's a bag lady on thestreet.
And so she found her and took along time to gain Lee's
(56:46):
confidence.
And and then she, lee, was anolder, an older woman, so older
woman.
So she was in her 70s andliving on the street, which is
not easy in a cold place likechicago, like right now.
Yeah, I don't mind who's on theradio set, it's stupid cold,
it's so cold right now, um.
But luckily then she had anaccident.
She was taken to a hospital,she recovered and then she felt
(57:09):
comfortable and went and livedin a nursing home and sometimes
lived with her daughter.
So at the end of her life shewas warm and loved.
But she left behind this amazingart.
That was all her idea of whatsomething beautiful was.
But she identified with theFrench Impressionists.
So the French Impressionistsare Renoir and Degas and others,
(57:33):
who Monet, who painted light,bright, pretty paintings.
They were mavericks of theirtime too, because before that
painting in Paris was big andheroic, it was all scenes that
referred to Greek mythology.
But here these FrenchImpressionists are painting
(57:53):
flowers and beautiful women, butit's all kind of light touches,
and so she identified with thatperiod, not her own period, but
a period that she admired fromthe past, and so she created her
own idea of it.
There was a popular drawingdrawing um in the in the early
(58:15):
turn of the century, um known asthe gibson girl, and the gibson
girl um is this drawing of,with like a, like a big piled up
hair, um, kind of like a bun,but more, more big.
If you look up gibson girl andthen if you look at the Lee
Goatee painting, you'll see thatthe ideas came from that, that
(58:35):
her whole idea was creatingbeauty and her again she, she is
the is really the queen ofoutsider art in Chicago, and
after she died her work now goesfor a lot of money.
You can actually, if you googlelee goatee antiques road show,
you'll find me talking about leegoatee.
(58:56):
Um, we had a painting of hersand a friend of mine had tickets
to the antiques road show,which is not my favorite show,
but my partner, david, loves it,and he said you're going with
me, what are you going to take?
And I said I'll take this new,this new painting we got of lee
goatee, and so they picked me tobe on the show and so it's a
great reference.
You can see it, um, but, uh,she wanted to be a french
(59:21):
impressionist and so, um, justrecently there's an outsider art
museum, or self-taught museum,or intuitive art as it's called
it has many names now, but it'scalled Intuit in Chicago, and
Chicago has a large collectionof various self-taught artists
(59:42):
who came in and out of Chicagoor lived here.
Most often they were very poorpeople, but they created art
because they had to, they feltit was, it was burning inside
them.
They had to do it.
Anyway, there was an amazingexhibit that went to Paris,
france, and Lee Goethe wasrepresented in that exhibit.
So she didn't have this dreamin her lifetime, but 15 years
(01:00:08):
after she died, her work isbeing shown in Paris.
So it's rather an extraordinarystory.
And the thing that's cool aboutour book is that we kind of
tell you the more personal sideof the artist.
It's not an academic book byany means.
There's a strong sense ofscholarship.
Lots of research went into itand a lot of just looking at the
art and figuring out how anartist may be yeah, I bet.
(01:00:29):
So he sent me some materialyesterday.
Um, and a lot of just lookingat the art and figuring out how
an artist maybe.
Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Yeah, I bet no, as I've looked at the.
So he sent me some material.
Yesterday we, uh, we had a chatand he sent me some of his um,
his art in his book, which Irecommend you just find a copy
somehow and look at it.
It's easy you can.
Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
You can get it on amazon.
Um uh, you can buy it at anindependent art, independent
bookstore.
It's called iconic artists.
The publisher is trope T R O PE and uh, jean-michel Basquiat
is on the cover.
Uh, it's a bright blue cover.
Um I I think you would allenjoy it.
Speaker 3 (01:01:06):
It really is.
It's.
It's quite fascinating and whenyou look at it he adds layers
of mystery.
But for me I didn't know what Iwas looking at until he
explained it.
But when you go through and heexplains it better, you see it
then what he did with the artist, kind of thing.
So it's definitely worthlooking it up.
(01:01:29):
His book it's fascinating.
Is there anything else?
In particular, david, we wantto go over that I might have
missed.
Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
No, the book is intended to be for anyone, for
any age.
The publisher thinks of theseas sort of coffee table books,
sort of modestly sized coffeetable art books that they would.
That would really inspire ayounger audience.
So they're intended to be for,um, you know someone who's in
(01:01:57):
their, in their, in their teens,from 16 to to 85?
Um, it's meant for a variety ofpeople.
It's not intended to be a kid'sbook, um, but that's um, where
the marketing hey it's whateverthe marketing department says.
So, uh, this is the fifth book.
Um, first we did a book of.
(01:02:19):
Each one has 50, uh, people init.
Each one, all of the books are.
I did all the art for it.
Um, the first one was LGBTQicons, and Frida Kahlo is on the
cover of that.
The next one was Science Peoplethere's a picture of Jane
Goodall and one of her famouschimps on the cover.
Next was Composers, and itfeatures a forgotten composer
(01:02:46):
from the time of MarieAntoinette and the French court,
before the French Revolution,but his name is Chevalier de
Saint-Georges.
He was a composer who wroteoperas and ballets and
symphonies and was friends withMozart and Marie Antoinette,
queen of Paris and Queen ofFrance.
And then we did one on 50 iconsin fashion.
(01:03:08):
And then the most newest bookis Iconic Artists, and it's a
lovely series of books.
They're about $24.95 each.
It's hardback, it's beautifullyprinted and if people are
looking for a gift for a youngerperson who has an interest in
(01:03:30):
fashion or art, or or a youngerperson who has an interest in
fashion or art, or fashion ormusic, these are the books that
you would love to give as aholiday present.
Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
Definitely, and it's really good.
I'm actually I have an artistfriend.
I might pick up a copy for him.
Please do so.
It's absolutely been a magical,wonderful experience.
David, I love how you told yourstories and it was very
captivating, but I could stilllook up the artists and it just
made it more impactful hearingyour story and looking at the
(01:04:00):
artists.
Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
Thank you, thank you, thank you Josh.
Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
You're welcome.
Is there any place inparticular?
They can reach you at.
Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
You can find me on Instagram at Cisco Kid.
So my last name is Hungarian,so it's very hard to spell.
It's two pairs of CSS, which isclassic Hungarian, so it's
C-S-I-C-S-K-O-K-I-D.
I'm on Instagram there and I'malso on Facebook and
(01:04:30):
unfortunately my website is downfor reasons I don't understand,
so I'm trying to get thatremedied and then you can find
me again.
But if you, if you can spell myname, you and just google it.
Um, I've done a lot.
I've done a lot of things, fromtrain stations to, uh, I
designed all the holidaydecorations at the Obama White
(01:04:50):
House in 2012, which were largestained glass windows and
ceramics, all kinds of things.
So I'm a lucky guy.
I love drawing.
I draw every day.
Every day I wake up drawingwith a pad and pencil and then I
work on a computer, and so I'msort of a crossover artist.
But the beauty of this artist'sbook the iconic artist's book
(01:05:11):
is that the style is consistent,but it changes to go with each
artist, so it's a, it's a visualtreat and, um, I think your
audiences would love itwonderful.
Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
Thank you again.
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