The Lonely 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’

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. Charlot

“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

What goes up into the sky must come down into the earth, and fortunately for us we’ve got Sarah Sze, mistress of materials, memory, and meaning, helming the journey. This episode was produced with support from Storm King Art Center. See the images: https://bit.ly/3NRnGmr Music used: Django Reinhardt, “Django’s Tiger” The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" The Blue Dot Sessions, “Plate Glass,” “Leatherbound,” “The Onyx,” “Silent Ocean,” “ZigZag Heart,” “Curious Case,” “On Top of It” Evan Blanch, “Where The Streets Have No Name (Instrumental)” (U2 cover) Episode sponsor: www.visualartspassage.com Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

Betcha never realized how deeply color colored your world - and the world - until you found yourself dancing down the diagonal of this showstopping print. This episode was produced in partnership with the Harvard Art Museums. The exhibition "Prints from the Brandywine Workshop and Archives: Creative Communities" is on view until July 31, 2022. Music used: The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" The Blue Dot Sessions, “Valley VX,” “Forgot His Jam,” “Dear Myrtle,” “Lakeside Path,” “Paramo Ocho,” “White Limit,” “Bivly” See the images: https://bit.ly/3MzWc47 Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

We stan a queen. This episode was produced in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. See the images: https://bit.ly/3tXx80o Music used: The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" The Blue Dot Sessions, “Pigpaddle Creek,” “Temperance,” “Highway 94,” “Floating Whist,” “Danver County,” “Mr. Graves,” “Willow Belle” Joe Dassin, “Les Champs-Elysees" Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

The Lonely Palette is on maternity leave until early March, which means that we've been turning to the archives to feature episodes specific to the many shades of motherhood. This episode, from March 2020, tackles the noble melons, jugs, and knockers that nourish the gazes and stomachs of the world. So why are we so disgusted when a woman – and specifically performance artist Patty Chang - saves a little bit for herself? See the images: bit.ly/33DsB4P Music used: The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" The Blue Dot Sessions, “Flatlands 3rd,” “Louver,” “Sino de Cobre,” “Dorica Theme,” “The Dustbin,” “We Shall Know Speed” Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

The Lonely Palette is on maternity leave until early March, which means that for the next few weeks, we'll be turning to the archives to feature episodes specific to the many shades of motherhood. This episode, from May 2018, looks at the Virgin Mary and her baby Jesus, and explores how their gentle, intimate relationship - as she gathers her diaphanous skirts to sit with her little nugget on the probably Cheerio-strewn floor of heaven - helps us understand the Renaissance. See the images: https://bit.ly/3rtNJIh Music Used: The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" Lobo Loco, "Piano Cora Theme" The Blue Dot Sessions, "UpUpUp and Over", "Slow Line Stomp", "Lakeside Path", "Perspiration", "Threads and Veils", "Moon Bicycle Theme" Joe Dassin, “Les Champs-Elysees" Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

The Lonely Palette is on maternity leave until early March, which means that for the next few weeks, we'll be turning to the archives to feature episodes specific to the many shades of motherhood. This episode, from February 2021, speaks not just to the hazy, cozy, time-out-of-joint space that Tamar is currently in, but also to the state of the pandemic, which, unfortunately, doesn't feel much sunnier today than it did a year ago. But what good is a mom if not to help us see our way out of the fog? See the images: bit.ly/3uaWHta Music used: The Blue Dot Sessions, “La Inglesa,” “Eggs and Powder,” “Paper Feather,” “Arizona Moon,” ”Lowball,” “Palladian,” “Simple Vale” Joe Dassin's “Les Champs-Elysees" via music box, ft. Calvin giggles Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

When tragedy strikes an individual, a nation, or an entire people, artists and architects are tasked with designing a public display that memorializes the event and its victims. But how do you do that? In this episode, we explore the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in DC, the 9/11 Memorial, and others, to look at how respecting and remembering loss collides with the demands of history and politics. Why do abstract, rather than representational, memorials resonate more profoundly in recent years? And no matter how well done they are, will they inevitably lose their impact after a single generation? This episode of The Lonely Palette was produced in collaboration with Slate’s Hi-Phi Nation. Music Used: The Blue Dot Sessions, “Drone Pine,” “Taoudella,” “The Consulate,” “Our Fingers Cold,” “Slider” Silver Maple, “After the Rain” Megan Wofford, “Awake” Yi Nantiro, “Blue Lantern” Christian Nanzell, “Contraband” Gunnar Johnsen, “Documents 4” Fabien Tell, “Liaison”

Quilts, and textiles in general, have a funny way of being overlooked by the fine art world. They’re dismissed as craft, as outsider, as “women’s work,” or as potentially uninteresting museum exhibits. But some quilts, and some quilters, tell their stories, explain our histories, and simply refuse to be denied. This episode was produced in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The exhibition “Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories” is on view until January 17, 2022. See the images: https://bit.ly/3jNT4FZ Music used: The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" Blue Dot Sessions, “Moon Bicycle Theme,” “Stucco Blue,” “Coronea,” “Lumber Down,” “Velvet Ladder,” “Gale” Get tickets to the exhibition: https://bit.ly/3GAli0M Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

A man. A woman. A window. A pitchfork. It’s the most seemingly straightforward double portrait to come out of rural America, and yet it’s become synonymous with ambiguity and mystery, parody and polarization. Amazing how hungry we are to turn a portrait of an artist’s hometown spirit into a portrait of a larger American cultural moment, no matter what it meant to them then, or what it means to us now. See the images: https://bit.ly/2WuV2CQ Music used: Django Reinhardt, “Django’s Tiger” The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" The Blue Dot Sessions, “Long and Low Cloud,” “Hakodate Line,” “Cornicob,” “Sylvestor,” “Di Breun,” “The Silver Hatch,” “Speaker Joy” Joe Dassin, “Les Champs-Elysees" Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

A year ago today, we released our most ambitious episode yet: an exploration of postwar German artist Anselm Kiefer's layered, dense, enormous canvases that themselves respond to the enormity of Holocaust survivor Paul Celan's layered, dense poem, "Todesfugue." In honor of this episode taking the gold in podcasting at the American Alliance of Museums' MuseWeb awards, we're re-releasing the episode, and with it the layers of metaphor and materials, texture and text, golden straw and blackened ash, that comprise the unimaginable. This episode was produced with support from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Learn more at www.sfmoma.com. See the images: bit.ly/31gUSwW Music used: The Blue Dot Sessions, “The Bus at Dawn,” “Silky,” Drone Pine,” “Tiny Bottles,” “Inamorata,” “Tapoco,” “The Summit,” “Cirrus,” “Derailed,” “Insatiable Toad,” “Dolly and Pad,” “A Pleasant Strike” John Williams, performed by Itzhak Perlman & Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, “Theme from Schindler’s List” Support the show: www.pa

Like so many of us, Dr. Rachel Saunders had a tough 2020. As the curator of Asian art at the Harvard Art Museums, she was thrilled to co-curate, with professor Yukio Lippit, the exhibition "Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection," the largest single exhibition the museum had ever mounted. And then, a month after its opening, it was shuttered by Covid, and remained closed until the entire exhibition came down early last month. But what could have been a bitter disappointment actually became exceptionally educational - perhaps par for the course at a prestigious university art museum, but with far-reaching implications for museums everywhere. Because when we talk about accessibility - and inaccessibility - in this context, we start to think about it in every context. How accessible are museums, ever? How authentically cross-cultural are our conversations? How do art historians wrestle with and decide on narratives? And how do we honor the multiplicity of these objects' histories while s

The Lonely Palette is collaborating with the Addison Gallery of American Art in celebration of the museum's 90th anniversary! In this episode, we're using the Addison's collection to explore the American city in the same way that art history has been looking at landscape since time immemorial: what it represents, what stories it tells us about ourselves, what stories it leaves out, what it replaces, and how its relationship to the human figure is as fraught and dramatic as any relationship you'll ever find on a canvas. Artists Explored: Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Robert Frank, Berenice Abbott, Charles Sheeler, Martin Wong See the Images: bit.ly/34AE9Xw Music Used: The Blue Dot Sessions, “The Zeppelin,” “Towboat Theme,” “Cat’s Eye,” “PlainGrey,” “Dorica Theme,” “Tranceless” Further Listening: The Lonely Palette on Edward Hopper: https://bit.ly/3wyqg8Y Support the Show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

The world is reopening just as Harvard's special exhibition "Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection" is permanently closing, having been open to the public for one heartbreakingly short month. But the exhibition, which documented the Edo period in all its diverse, aesthetic richness, doesn't have to be in front of you to describe its uncannily Buddhist and modernist moment, or to share in the strange lightness of ours. This episode was produced with support from Harvard Art Museums. See the images: http://www.thelonelypalette.com/episodes/2021/6/5/episode-53-painting-edo-post-pandemic Music used: The Blue Dot Sessions, “Noe Noe,” “A Certain Lightness,” “Algea Trio,” “Kilkerrin,” “Gullwing Sailor,” “Two Dollar Token,” “Silent Flock” Billie Holiday, “Blue Moon” Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

The Lonely Palette is collaborating with the Addison Gallery of American Art in celebration of the museum's 90th anniversary! In this episode, we're using the Addison's collection to explore the figure, which, in art history, is almost exclusively the object of the gaze. But what does it mean when the body – that is, the multi-dimensional person who inhabits it – steps behind the lens as well to take back control? Artists Explored: Lalla Essaydi, Laurie Simmons, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Sally Mann, Dawoud Bey See the Images: https://bit.ly/34AE9Xw Music Used: The Blue Dot Sessions, “The Zeppelin,” “Dirty Wallpaper,” “Polycoat,” “Pastel de Nata,” “Turning to You,” “The Consulate” Further Listening: The Lonely Palette on Mary Cassatt: https://bit.ly/3uFM9Bj Support the Show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

The Lonely Palette is collaborating with the Addison Gallery of American Art in celebration of the museum's 90th anniversary! In this episode, we're using the Addison's collection to explore abstraction, i.e. the one guaranteed way to alienate your visitor. Or...maybe not? Maybe, when it comes to art without a fixed meaning, our presence is requested, and even required? Artists Explored: Agnes Martin, Jackson Pollock, Mark Bradford, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd See the Images: https://addison.andover.edu/AboutUs/Pages/Podcast.aspx Music Used: The Blue Dot Sessions, “The Zeppelin,” “Pinky,” “Flattered,” “A Little Powder,” “Arizona Moon,” “Daymaze,” “The Summit,” Jason Leonard, “Ritual Six” Further Listening: The Lonely Palette on Jackson Pollock: https://bit.ly/3eUQdsE The Lonely Palette on Jasper Johns: https://bit.ly/3hDFq82 Support the Show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette

In honor of the Addison Gallery of American Art's 90th anniversary, we've teamed up to release a three-part podcast series! We'll be taking a thematic view of their diverse and world class collection, exploring abstraction, the figure, and the urban sublime. New episodes will be released on The Lonely Palette feed every two weeks beginning Tuesday, May 18th. For more information on the exhibition, visit: https://addison.andover.edu/Exhibitions/90/Pages/default.aspx. Music used: The Blue Dot Sessions, "Waterbourne"

In honor of Earth Day 2021, we're re-releasing our episode on quintessential dorm room photographer Ansel Adams, and re-exploring how his own travels around, and documentation of, this complicated, contradictory, beautiful country inspired him to want to preserve it - from the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam - in the most exquisite way possible. Music used: The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" The Blue Dot Sessions, “Vibrant Canopy”, “Bridgewalker”, “The Yards”, “Silver Lanyard”, “Velvet Ladder” Tamar Avishai, “Michigan” Joe Dassin, “Les Champs-Elysees" See the images: https://bit.ly/2znbBEL Support the show: www.patreon.com/lonelypalette