We're in THE HOME STRETCH of our Patreon Listener Challenge! This is indeed the time to pull up your socks and start supporting the show, all to the dulcet tones of a re-release of our second and most lauded Patreon listener-supported episode from 2019 on the Ecce Homo restoration fiasco, wherein a well-intentioned, though, uh, untrained parishioner in a small Spanish town decided to take it upon herself restore a crumbling fresco and inadvertently birthed the meme of our young century. And if you're so moved, please consider making us happy little trees by becoming a Patreon patron at any level, and we'll do you one better with an episode on your favorite soothing soft-voiced paint-dabby PBS mainstay and mine, Bob Ross. See the images: http://www.thelonelypalette.com/episodes/2019/1/25/episode-36-behold-the-monkey-the-ecce-homo-restoration Music used: The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" The Blue Dot Sessions, “Sylvestor”, “Mute Steps”, “Mr. Graves”, “Lobo Lobo”, “Lumber Down”, “Cloudy Cider” Tracie Potochnik, “Cecilia and the Saints” Support the show! www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

Our Patreon Listener Challenge is ongoing! And if you're on the fence about supporting the show, why not sit back with a re-release of our first-ever Patreon listener-supported episode from 2018 on C.M. Coolidge's "Dogs Playing Poker," where we dive into the trials and tribulations of kitsch, the battle between the Sams and Dianes of the world, and what it means to appreciate art at a frequency that we all can hear. And if you're so moved, please consider making us happy little trees by becoming a Patreon patron at any level, and we'll do you one better with an episode on your favorite soothing soft-voiced paint-dabby PBS mainstay and mine, Bob Ross. See the images: www.thelonelypalette.com/episodes/201…g-poker-1903 Music used: The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" The Blue Dot Sessions, "Rose Ornamental," "Flattered," "Arizona Moon," "Laser Focus," "Alchemical," "Two in the Back," "Maisie Dreamer," "Gullwing Sailor," "Maldoc" Joe Dassin, “Les Champs-Elysees" Support the show! www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

A number of years ago, my Twitter pinged. Then it pinged again. All of a sudden, a whole host of people were following the show, and when I giddily found the source, it was the soulful and stylish Avery Trufelman, longtime 99% Invisible producer, currently of Articles of Interest, and fashionista tastemaker, who had pronounced The Lonely Palette her favorite art history podcast. Bestill my heart! It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, a kinship between co-founders of a mutual admiration society where the stories of stuff - art, objects, design, things, everything they say you can’t put on the radio - reigned supreme. Avery and I popped into our respective closets to chat about writing, audio, art, fashion, the trappings of podcast success, storytelling in a heated political climate, trusting your voice, that infamous cerulean blue scene in The Devil Wears Prada, ranking the heroes of epic poetry, and much more. Episode webpage: https://bit.ly/3jtcOBl Music used: The Blue Dot Sessions, “Swapping Tubes” The Kinks, “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” Support our year-end fundraiser! bit.ly/3An5jSd

They say that those who can do and those who can’t teach. But “they” don’t seem to have ever met a proper teacher. In honor of the Norwegian town of Bodø’s recognition as a 2024 European Capital of Culture, we dive into Bodø’s most famous artist, Adelsteen Normann, the teacher you’ve never heard of, the picture-postcard modernist who introduced us to the scream that is Edvard Munch, and, eclipsed though he may have been, the painter who illuminated both the town he loved and the students he nurtured with the warmth of a sun that never sets. This episode was produced in partnership with Bodø2024: European Capital of Culture. See the images: https://bit.ly/3FX0S3H Music used: The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" The Blue Dot Sessions, “Lerennis,” “Lissa,” “Ice Tumbler,” “Mr. Graves,” “Throughput,” “A Rush of Clear Water,” “Pinky,” “The Green Room” Vivaldi, “Summer” Support our year-end fundraiser! bit.ly/3An5jSd

Light and dark. Frozen action. Angels with dirty faces. Infamously both a hothead punk and one of the most extraordinarily potent and virtuosic painters in the canon, Caravaggio is nothing if not a man of contrasts. See the images: https://bit.ly/3iNqpTY Music used: Django Reinhardt, “Django’s Tiger” The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" Charles Daab, “Irish and Scotch melodies (take 2)” The Blue Dot Sessions, “Highway 430,” “Angel Tooth,” “Di Breun,” “Rainy Day Drone,” “No Smoking,” “Cornicob,” “Tarte Tatin,” “Vernouillet,” “Thread of Clouds,” “Set the Tip Jar,” “Homin Brer” Joe Dassin, “Les Champs-Elysees" Support our year-end fundraiser! https://bit.ly/3An5jSd Episode sponsor: www.visualartspassage.com/palette

Dar Williams has been described by The New Yorker as “one of America’s very best singer-songwriters,” but to thirteen-year-old Tamar she was, quite simply, a personal hero: a songwriter whose poetry, poignancy, and humor could capture at once the authentic voices of an inner child, a searching young adult, and a wizened sage. We met in person in 2013 at Dar’s songwriting retreat, and our friendship has been evolving ever since, exploring together the rigors of writing and storytelling through sound and song, and what it means to dip in and out of a creative space as a way of simply getting through the day. Dar has recently published a book about songwriting that is chock full of philosophical wisdom and applicable nuggets, many of which borne from a decade of retreats. We sat down together to talk about songwriting, art museums, the art of writing songs about art, and specifically her evocative, ambivalent "Mark Rothko Song," which tackles it all head-on. [2:05] Dar’s relationship with museums and creating a space for poetic thinking. [8:40] Specific museums, exhibitions, paintings that have inspired Dar’s songs: Dia, “Made in America,” the Fogg. [11:45] Writing Mark Rothko Song. Where did Dar go? Where did Dar really go? [14:45] The difficulties inherent in writing about art. What prompted the writing of this song? Dar’s first encounter with Rothko’s “Untitled (Blue Green)” and the first verse. [20:15] Diving into the prosody of the song, how the music and lyrics support the voice of the song: finger picking, major to minor, chord to chord, key to key, mood to mood. [27:41] Return to the lyrics and narrative. The way that Rothko encourages people to make subjective associations…but then comes the foil of the second verse, creating the contrast between subjective and objective. [33:52] The song’s dueling (or complementary?) aha moments in the bridge and final verse. People both love Rothko and struggle to connect to him. Following the narrator’s journey as she wrestles with seeing something versus knowing something. [45:47] Appreciating an honest song about art viewing that doesn’t flatten the characters. Reflecting on the elements of the song that hold up as Dar has gotten older. [51:19] The similarities between art museums and songwriting retreats: opening up, engaging poetic thinking. [55:28] Also the hazards of living in a space of poetic thinking, especially as a parent. The necessary objectivity of the caretaking space. [1:02:20] The “Five Things” Rule, and whether Mark Rothko might just be the exception that proves the rule. Tamar meets her Rothko and gives hope to kind pedestrians everywhere. [1:09:14] Mark Rothko Song in full. Music Used: Dar Williams, “When I Was A Boy”; “Mark Rothko Song” (live); “The Beauty Of The Rain”; “Mark Rothko Song” (album version) Episode Webpage: https://bit.ly/3RJm9Ak Support the Show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

Hello, friends to art podcasts! I'm giving my feed over today to a preview of a new podcast from Pushkin Industries, Somethin’ Else, and Sony Music Entertainment: "Death of an Artist". The show examines a tragedy in the art world. For more than 35 years, accusations of murder shrouded one of the art world’s most storied couples: was the famous sculptor Carl Andre involved in the death of his up-and-coming artist wife Ana Mendieta? Host Helen Molesworth revisits Mendieta’s death, taking a closer look at how she might have fallen out of the window of Carl’s 34th floor New York apartment, and the following trial which has divided the art world since 1985. Hear more from "Death of an Artist" at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/artist?sid=palette.

There isn’t a single subject that Adam Gopnik’s prose can’t bring to life. As staff writer at the New Yorker since 1986, he has written about almost everything, including, just in the last year, Proust, gun control, the Beatles, and the Marquis de Lafayette. But it’s when he starts writing about art that things get particularly delectable: “the runny, the spilled…the lipstick-traces-left-on-the-kleenex” life and style of Helen Frankenthaler; “the paint, laid on with a palette knife, that deliciously resembles cake frosting” technique of Florine Stettheimer; “the monumental and mock-monumental that tango in the imagination” of Claes Oldenburg. And perhaps the reason why Gopnik, who has a graduate degree in art history from NYU’s Institute of Fine Art, is able to write about art with such lucidness and latitude is that he isn’t just knowledgeable about art; he adores it. The charge, the perfume, the misty spray of the orange peel that is evoked when you stand in the Arena Chapel - everything that, if you’re not careful, becoming a professional in your creative field will neutralize. We talked about being docents in large museums, how to hook your audience, how to write a poem about art, Vladimir Tatlin, Steve Martin, Stephen Sondheim, the incompatible forces that create beauty, and the noble truths of art creating and art writing: eye to hand, and I to you. Episode webpage: https://bit.ly/3COhnOp Music used: The Blue Dot Sessions, “Balti” Mandy Patinkin, “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday in the Park with George Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

Art history textbooks, so excellent for flattening curled-up rug corners and holding open doors, are expected to tell us the entire story of our civilization, one painting at a time. It's more than any book, even one that weighs a spine-crunching twenty-five pounds, should be expected to do. And it opens our eyes to the way that history is narrated, and taught, and even, it follows, to how paintings are displayed, and museums are curated. So much is touched on; so much is left out. It's too much, and far too little, all at once. Dr. Charlotte Mullins has decided to lean into the brevity, and in doing so, manages to tell us so much more. In her new book, "A Little History of Art," she tells the story of 100,000 years of art history, in, in her words, language akin to a haiku, every word intentionally chosen, every artwork telling its own story. She turns us into time-travelers in a scant 300 pages. We talked about reading art history, teaching art history, writing art history, and much more. Charlotte is the art critic for Country Life and has written for specialist titles and newspapers including the Financial Times, Telegraph, Independent on Sunday, RA Magazine, Art in America and Tate Magazine. A former editor of Art Quarterly, V&A Magazine and Art Review, she has appeared on BBC TV arts programmes and is a regular on BBC Radio 4's Front Row and Radio 3's Free Thinking. She is the author of more than a dozen books including a monograph on Rachel Whiteread and A Little Feminist History of Art, both for Tate, and the internationally acclaimed Painting People, and its companion volume Picturing People, both for Thames & Hudson. Music used: The Blue Dot Sessions, "Spark" Rod Stewart, "Every Picture Tells A Story" Episode webpage: https://bit.ly/3ARd17U Charlotte's book: https://amzn.to/3TksKDl Episodes referenced: Anselm Kiefer: https://bit.ly/31gUSwW Sarah Sze: https://bit.ly/3NRnGmr Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

“I am for the art of underwear and the art of ice cream cones dropped on concrete. I am for an art that is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.” Today, the art world - and, as he would attest, the world world too - lost a giant, and we're re-releasing our episode from September 2020 in his honor. RIP, Claes Oldenburg, and thank you for plucking art from its spotless frame and returning it to our messy, magnificent plane. Hope you're enjoying that great big floor pie in the sky. See the images: bit.ly/3hcHjVq Music used: Django Reinhardt, “Django’s Tiger” The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" The Blue Dot Sessions, “Cradle Rock,” “Sylvestor,” “A Little Powder,” “Our Only Lark,” “Town Market,” “Contrarian,” “The Rampart” Joe Dassin, “Les Champs-Elysees" Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette