A podcast about lots of interesting topics.
Queen Nefertiti is the undisputed icon of ancient beauty, yet the 3,300-year-old painted bust that made her famous is defined by contradictions: a missing left eye, and, as CT scans in 1992 and 2006 revealed, the face of an older woman with creases, hollow cheeks, and a bump on her nose carved into the limestone… Read.
Five hours before John Lennon was murdered, Annie Leibovitz photographed him nude, curled around a fully clothed Yoko Ono, and he told her the Polaroid captured their relationship exactly. This episode builds a narrative of the artist behind that image: born in 1949 to an Air Force lieutenant colonel and a modern dance instructor, raised… Read.
At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, a 16-foot plaster sculpture shaped like a harp, its strings formed by twelve singing Black children and its sounding board by a giant hand and arm, was one of the fair’s defining masterpieces. When the fair closed, its creator could not afford to cast it in bronze or… Read.
On October 5, 2018, seconds after Banksy’s Girl with Balloon sold at Sotheby’s London for 1,042,000 pounds, a siren wailed and the canvas began sliding out of its frame in shredded strips, stopping halfway through. This episode goes beyond the shock of the moment to examine the mechanics hidden in the frame: a canvas given… Read.
In May 2017 a 1982 painting of a skull sold for 110.5 million dollars after a ten-minute bidding war. A few years before it was painted, the artist was a homeless teenager sleeping in Washington Square Park and selling postcards for a dollar. This episode examines how Jean-Michel Basquiat, born in Brooklyn in 1960 to… Read.
Imagine hands steady enough to carve microscopic detail into solid gold, and the same hands plunging a dagger into a rival’s neck on a cobblestone street. This episode charts the pivotal turning points in the life of Benvenuto Cellini, the 16th-century goldsmith, sculptor, and author who navigated a volatile Italy of warring city-states, papal intrigue,… Read.