Art Smart

Kyle Wood

1 Creator

Art is for everyone, but sometimes, the way we talk about art doesn't make sense to anyone. Art Smart breaks through the confusing artspeak to help everyone understand and enjoy art a little bit more. Every episode is short and to the point giving you a quick overview of the topic in just a few minutes. In Season 1, Art Smart focused on the Elements of Art and the Principles of Design. The elements of art are the building blocks of art and the principles of design focus on how artists arrange those building blocks. Understanding the Elements and Principles can help you become a better creator whether you aspire to be the next Leonardo da Vinci, or you just want your family photos to look good on social media. For Season 2, Art Smart is focusing on different eras and movements in art. What is the difference between modern and post-modern? How were the Post-Impressionists and Impressionists similar and different? Learn all about these and other movements in season 2. Each episode will cover a movement or era in broad strokes, then give you five specific artists/works to look at for a better understanding.

#20 in the Top 100 Indie visual arts All time chart

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Top 10 Art Smart Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Art Smart episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Art Smart for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Art Smart episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Modern Art

Art Smart

07/20/22 • 10 min

Most art historians tend to say the shift to modernism started in the mid to late nineteenth century. This was an era of rethinking the old rules, breaking free from the established traditions and experimenting with new ways of working. There is not one specific artwork that ushered in the modern era. It was not birthed on one specific day. It was an evolution, but if I were to look for a dividing line I would say that the modern era started around the time that Daguerre gave us his photographic method. Photography becoming more accessible changed the way artists worked. Painters were liberated in a way because they no longer needed to focus on capturing an accurate likeness. Those who wanted realistic pictures could simply take a photograph. Of course, the new technology could also threaten their livelihood as patrons could now choose between a painting and a photograph for their portraits. Regardless of whether artists considered the new technology as an opportunity or a threat, the end result was artists experimenting and becoming more abstract. They focused on things the camera could not capture. At first, the Impressionists looked at color, then Post-Impressionists moved on to the expressive qualities. As I said the work became increasingly abstract until artists like Jackson Pollock were simply dripping paint onto the canvas. So what is the connection between Impressionists focusing on what they saw and Jackson Pollock’s action painting? Why do all of these movements fall under the modern umbrella? I would say the through line with modernism is a philosophy rooted in the idea that artists could capture some objective truth that would make the work timeless and universal. The impressionists were focused on optics and how the human eye perceives color. The abstract expressionists ran with the modernist quest to distill art down to a fundamental essence and took it to its logical conclusion. They broke art down to the basic elements like line, color, and texture to create a sense of movement and an expressive composition that was free of specific subject matters which would have tied it to a time and culture.

Go to the Art Smart website (https://www.artsmartpodcast.com/art-erasmovements/modern-art) to see images of the artworks I mentioned as well as podcasts about those artists.

If you are looking for a little extra credit and want to learn more about the artists listed in this episode, check out the following episodes of Who ARTed:

Claude Monet | Water Lilies

Rodin | Burghers of Calais

Vincent van Gogh | The Starry Night

Pablo Picasso | Guernica

Jackson Pollock

Janet Sobel

Wassily Kandinsky | Yellow Red Blue

Art Smart is an Airwave Media Podcast.

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4 Listeners

Cubism

Art Smart

09/28/22 • 10 min

In 1907, Pablo Picasso and George Braque developed art from a new perspective. They began creating works that seemed fragmented and at times almost unrecognizable. The idea was to show the subject from multiple perspectives all in one composition.

Art Smart is an Airwave Media Podcast.

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As always you can find images of the work being discussed at www.ArtSmartPodcast.com and of course, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You might hear it read out on the show.

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Elements of Art: Space

Art Smart

01/04/22 • 5 min

This episode is about the Element of Art, Space. In addition to the depth created in the foreground, middle ground and background, artist think about the positive and negative space in a composition. In this episode I referenced a classic illusion playing with positive and negative space. You can find the image reference here.

If you enjoy the podcast, please follow and rate it on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to learn more about art and art history, check out my other podcast, Who ARTed, where each week I cover a different artist and their work along with fun fact mini-episodes every Friday to give you an interesting story that isn't covered in the standard art history survey course.

You can also find more information and resources at www.whoartedpodcast.com

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2 Listeners

Elements of Art: Shape

Art Smart

01/04/22 • 4 min

This episode is about the Element of Art: Shape. A shape occurs when a line bumps into itself. Learn about different types of shapes and their uses within a composition.

You can also find more information and resources at www.whoartedpodcast.com

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2 Listeners

Surrealism

Art Smart

08/17/22 • 12 min

Andre Breton, was a poet, but he had also studied medicine and psychiatry. He was well versed in Freud’s theories and in 1924, Breton wrote the surrealist manifesto. The core idea behind the wide ranging movement was that reason and logic constrain a person’s mind and that if an artist were to break free of those constraints, they could tap into a more vast area of the unconscious mind.

If you want to learn more about the artists mentioned in this episode, check out Who ARTed on your favorite podcast app, or click the following links to hear the relevant episodes.

Meret Oppenheim | Object

Salvador Dali | The Persistence of Memory

Frida Kahlo | The Two Fridas

Rene Magritte | The False Mirror

Marcel Duchamp | Fountain

Art Smart is an Airwave Media Podcast.

Connect with me:

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2 Listeners

Ancient Egyptian Art

Art Smart

09/14/22 • 12 min

In two-dimensional art, the ancient Egyptians practiced an approach referred to as frontalism. Each feature was shown from the ideal, most recognizable view. The head was shown in profile while the torso was facing forward. The feet would then be shown from the side as that was a more easily recognizable shape for a foot. The result was a mix of perspectives on the figure making it appear contorted but it was the ideal symbol rendering each part in ways that would be easily identified.

Another distortion we see in ancient Egyptian artifacts was hierarchical scale. Simply put, the more important a figure was, the bigger it would be in the composition. Conversely, a less important figure would be smaller. So gods and pharaohs would be shown as noticeably larger than the average Egyptian.

If you want to learn more about ancient Egypt, check out these episodes of Who ARTed:

The Pyramids at Giza

The Mummy's Curse

Art Smart is an Airwave Media Podcast.

Connect with me:

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Tiktok

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2 Listeners

Elements of Art: Color

Art Smart

01/04/22 • 8 min

This episode is about the Element of Art: Color. Learn about what color is, how we see it, and the different sets of primary colors.

You can also find more information and resources at www.whoartedpodcast.com

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2 Listeners

Elements of Art: Line

Art Smart

01/04/22 • 5 min

This episode is all about the Element of Art: Line. In Art, we consider a mark with length and direction to be a line. Lines can be long or short, they can be straight, wavy, zig-zag, jagged, thick, or thin. Lines can be solid or dotted; we might even talk about a line that is not physically present in the work but merely suggested by other elements we see.

You can also find more information and resources at www.whoartedpodcast.com

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2 Listeners

The Renaissance

Art Smart

08/31/22 • 13 min

The word Renaissance means re-birth. Around 1400 CE there was a tremendous shift in visual arts and other aspects of culture. One major influence in the Renaissance was an appreciation for Greek and Roman art and philosophy. While a lot of the works of Plato, Aristotle and others had been lost to Europeans in the middle ages, many of the ancient texts had been translated by Muslim scholars starting around the 8th century and through trade, the texts were re-introduced to Europe. The Italian peninsula was a center for trade bringing together people of various cultures to spread ideas, and resulting in wealthy city-states that could support a thriving arts community. Still, the Renaissance also took hold in Northern Europe although it did look a little different.

If you want to learn more about the Renaissance, check out these artists/works:

Michaelangelo | The Sistine Chapel

Leonardo | The Last Supper

Raphael | The School of Athens

Donatello | David

Jan van Eyck | The Arnolfini Portrait

Art Smart is an Airwave Media Podcast.

Connect with me:

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2 Listeners

Prehistoric Art

Art Smart

10/05/22 • 11 min

Art is as old as humanity. I have often said that art is what defines us as human. It is why and how we got out of the trees. The ability to express ourselves creatively is what allows humans to come together, to understand each other, to envision a better future. While prehistoric art predates recorded history and therefore we have no artist’s statements giving us certainty into the intentions behind these works, we do see clues in the designs, the materials used by the aritsts, and the placement of the pieces.

My 5 favorite prehistoric pieces (links to episodes of Who ARTed when applicable):

The world's oldest artwork - handprint fossils

The Apollo 11 Stones

The Running Horned Woman

Stonehenge

The Lascaux Cave Paintings

Art Smart is an Airwave Media Podcast.

Connect with me:

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Tiktok

Support the show:

Merch from TeePublic | Make a Donation

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices