Art Slice - A Palatable Serving of Art History

WeReee bAcK ~~~ diving into not one but TWO monumental works by TWO monumental artists—Hieronymus Bosch's enigmatic triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights" (1490-1510) and Keith Haring's stunning and heartbreaking final work "Altarpiece / The Life of Christ" (1990).

Believe it or not, there are parallels between these two artists who lived nearly half a millennia apart, they touch on remarkably similar themes about our experience as, you know - humans —albeit with completely different conclusions. 

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In Part 1, we cover:

The mysterious Hieronymus Bosch — born, lived, and died in 's-Hertogenbosch, a Catholic hub in the Netherlands. Records of his life are so scant he's become one of art history's most fascinating figures which has led to some speculation that he was part of a clandestine religious nudist colony, the Adamites.

We touch on his early work "Adoration of the Magi" (c.1475) featuring an unusual teal blue palette and some unexpectedly hilarious details (including an angel getting its wings stuck in a tower!).

We introduce Keith Haring's artist journey beginning from his small hometown of Kutztown, PA, his "Jesus Freak" teen years and how The Free Hollywood Newspaper left a lasting impression, and finally onto NYC's flourishing art scene of the 1980s. In the subways, he would crank out an estimated 10,000 subway drawings between 1980-1985 and it's also where he would first encounter his future collaborator Angel Ortiz’s graffiti work.

All of this is happening during the beginning of the Reagan era which was fueled by Southern Conservatives backlash to increasing LGBTQ+ visibility, the rise of "Christian" televangelists, and the growing, deathly AIDS crisis.

In Part 2, we will focus on the works themselves so make sure to subscribe so you don't miss it!!

MUSIC:

"Hieronymus Bosch Butt Music from Hell" - commissioned from Betta Music Pro (who also remixed our theme song!)  

HolinzaCC0 - Beginning 2: https://holiznacc0.bandcamp.com/album/gamer-music

2003 Toyota Corolla - 2006 Toyota Corolla: https://hanahata.bandcamp.com/album/2003-toyota-corolla

CREDITS:

Writing and Research by Stephanie Dueñas and Russell Shoemaker

*Special help with research provided by Berkley (Thank you Berkley!) 

Editing, Production and Sound Design by Russell Shoemaker

Theme by Russell Shoemaker and Betta Music Pro

Ending Theme by Russell Shoemaker and Underwood Beats

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Hello Ear Buddies

We should be releasing Hieronymus Bosch X Keith Haring later this week (fingers crossed) - until then please enjoy this special feed drop:

When Alice Gregory and Leon Neyfakh started building a library for their infant daughter, they stumbled across a name in an obituary that Alice recognized from her own childhood: celebrated children’s book author and illustrator Petra Mathers. Petra had died by suicide alongside her husband, Michael Mathers. Both were in their late 70s, seemingly happy and healthy.

The details of Petra and Michael’s deaths pulled Alice and Leon down a rabbit hole that neither were expecting—a plan many years in the making, dozens of letters mailed out across the country, friends and family caught between betrayal and envy, and a community grappling with their own feelings around aging and death.

Death of an Artist drops weekly on Tuesdays starting August 25. Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of Death of an Artist by subscribing to Pushkin+. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening for all Pushkin shows.

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Music: HolinzaCC0 - Beginning 2

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VIDEO VERSION HERE: https://youtu.be/MHJ5KNFtfqU

Listeners, today we are FINALLY diving into Leonora Carrington’s epic mural “The Magical World of the Maya” or “El mundo mágico de los mayas” made with casein, tempera on panel 1963-64. 

Picking up from Part 1, we rejoin LC after several visits to Chiapas to observe and learn from the Tzoztil, Teztil and Lacandon in Chiapas, reading and studying the Popol Vuh, she begins incorporating her own experience.

Among the places she visited in Chiapas that appear in the mural are the cemetery in Romerillo, with its giant, majestic blue-green crosses; the syncretistic church of San Juan Chamula, and the former monastery of Santo Domingo in San Cristobal de las Casas.

We get deep into how our Hyena Queen was so expertly able to weave together all of these influences using her unique painting technique made of those iconic tiny brushmarks and washy layers to depict all of these Mayan gods and mythical creatures.

We also discuss important events that occurred during and soon after the completion of the mural including the sudden death of Remedios Varo and Jose Horna, the beginning of Mexico’s Dirty War inspiring LC’s political works “Leptidoptera” (1968), “Operation Wednesday” (1969) and the poster for the women’s feminist movement in Mexico, “Mujeres Conciencia” (1972).

Topics include: Turtle-Earthers, so much corn (not KoЯn), Carl(os) Sagán, Chac’s tamales, kiterangs, animorphing goddesses, sacred hummingbirds, jungle love stew, Mayan crosses, Xibalba orgies, and so much more!

FEATURED MUSIC:

Chris Zabriskie - 'Everybody's Got Problems That Aren't Mine' from the album 'Thoughtless'

https://chriszabriskie.bandcamp.com/album/thoughtless

MUSIC:

glaciære - 'Shimmering Dust'

Monplaisir - 'Staring at the void between me and the wall'

2003 Toyota Corolla - '2011 Toyota Corolla'

Chris Zabriskie - 'Rewound'

2003 Toyota Corolla - '2002 Toyota Corolla'

CREDITS:

Writing and Research by Stephanie Duenas and Russell Shoemaker

Editing, Production and Sound Design by Russell Shoemaker

Theme by Russell Shoemaker and Betta Music Pro

Ending Theme by Russell Shoemaker and Underwood Beats

✅ 

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WEEE’’’RREEE BAAACCCKKKK!!!!

VIDEO VERSION HERE: https://youtu.be/4Rx_f27XNlg

Today we are revisiting our fav Hyena Queen LEONORA CARRINGTON: this time covering her epic mural “The Magical World of the Maya” or “El mundo mágico de los mayas” from casein, tempera on panel 1963-64. 

This 14ft x 7ft beaut of a work features a slice of Mayan life including the sky, earth and underworld all filled with mysterious scenes, cosmological events, and mythical creatures - brought to us through Leonora’s lens using those tiny brushmarks and washy layers.

 

We first covered her work, the small 1945 painting “The House Opposite” in our Las Tres Witches episodes featuring her witchy besties Surrealist artists Remedios Varo and Kati Horna and we left off as she settled into her new home in Mexico City.

Through Kati Horna, LC would meet and fall in love with and marries also newly immigrated Hungarian photographer and concentration camp survivor, Emerico “Chiki” Weisz. She captures this new era in her 1944 painting “Chiki Your Country”, an autobiographical, fantastical and wonderfully weird landscape - a work that foreshadows her approach to the Mayan mural. 

Fast forward 20 yearish later: it’s 1963, Surrealism has faded and LC is part of a new generation of artists called the Breakaway Generation (Generación de la Ruptura) for breaking away from Muralism. And she landed a commission to paint “The Magical World of the Maya” for the grand opening of the National Museum of Anthropology in Chapultepec Park.

To prepare, LC found herself embarking on a wild ride (literally and figuratively) to meet with the Maya of Chiapas including the Tzoztil, Teztil and Lacandon. 

Her guide to Chiapas would be the badass Swiss, machete-wielding, combat boot-wearing land activist and indigenous advocate Gertrude “Trudi” Blom. 

Along with getting to experience the unique wildlife and landscapes Chiapas had to offer, Trudy introduced LC to curanderos (shamans) and was able to observe secret rituals that most don’t, especially foreigners. 

Back in her home in Colonia Roma in Mexico City, she took her research studying the Kʼicheʼ (Quicheʼ) Maya Popoh Vu and combined it with her experience with the Chiapas Maya, and some Northern Renaissance inspiration like Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosch, resulting in this stunning timeless mural.

“The Magical World of the Maya” has been on our minds since those Las Tres Witches days and in 2024, we decided to finally see it for ourselves in Mexico City! Words cannot describe what it was like to experience it in person but hopefully this episode might be a close second!

So, join us as we explore how this mural came to be! 

Topics include: Was Waldo in Bosch’s ear? Guardian Chihuahuas in Roma, Henry Kissinger goes woke, early 2000s Hot Topic tees, and so much more!

FEATURED MUSIC: 

glaciære - "3,5km long distance (feat. Hysteric Pixie Nightmare Girl)" 

https://glaciaere.bandcamp.com/album/overflow

OTHER TRACKS:

glaciære - "shimmering dust" https://glaciaere.bandcamp.com/album/overflow

 @Holizna - "yesterday" https://holiznacc0.bandcamp.com/album/lofi-and-chill

CREDITS:

Writing and Research by Stephanie Duenas and Russell Shoemaker

Editing, Production and Sound Design by Russell Shoemaker

Theme by Russell Shoemaker and Betta Music Pro

Ending Theme by Russell Shoemaker and Underwood Beats

✅ 

Sign up for our algorithm free newsletter ➫ 

https://www.artslicepod.com/

Support the show! ➫ https://Patreon.com/artslicepod

Merch ➫ https://artslicepod-shop.fourthwall.com/collections/all

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This week we are zooming out . . . wayyy out . . . further . . .further . . .Okay now zoom innnn. . . . to a world without borders through the eyes of artist, illustrator, set-designer, archeologist, and art historian Miguel Covarrubias. And to help us out on this journey, the amazing Veka Duncan @vekaduncan has joined us. 

WATCH THE VIDEO VERSION HERE: https://youtu.be/BOJ13HZA3Bs

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Miguel aka El Chamaco, is the other half of that Mexican artist power couple, not named Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera, from our last episode with Rosa Rolanda: https://youtu.be/w-CVdxpnwBc 

Some may know him from his Harlem Renaissance series, his Broadway set designs, his groundbreaking book on Bali, or even his covers for Vanity Fair and/or The New Yorker.

You Texans may know his monumental 1954 glass mosaic mural, "Genesis, the Gift of Life," outside of the Dallas Museum of Art where Miguel reinterprets the story of genesis through a Mesoamerican and Native-American symbols and mythologies.

Miguel’s work touched on so many subjects; traveling to so many continents, really observing and getting to know the people, their culture and surrounding environments. 

His groundbreaking archaeological research was revered, his caricatured cultural icons duked it out in his “Impossible Interviews” series, he painted massive murals that highlight all of the people, flora, and fauna that make up our home planet, always blending humor, science, and a real love for everything that makes us human.  

Like Rosa Rolanda’s work, it’s unbelievable that his work still feels so contemporary despite being made almost a century ago. 

Topics Include: Tomax and Xamot at Costco, Anthony Bourdain blowing up the 90s glam culinary scene, Cracking your teacher’s skull, Palacio de Cultura Banamex, Harlem Renaissance, Impossible interviews, Animal bucket lists, Empanadas with tentacles

Support us on Patreon! - Patreon.com/artslicepod

MUSIC INCLUDES:

“Keep up the momentum, friend” by Chris Zabriske - https://chriszabriskie.bandcamp.com/album/i-made-this-while-you-were-asleep

“2013 Toyota Corolla” by 2003 Toyota Corolla - https://hanahata.bandcamp.com/album/2013-toyota-corolla  

“You’re Magic” by Soft and Furious - https://chezmonplaisir.bandcamp.com/album/bae 

CREDITS:

Writing and Research by Stephanie Duenas and Russell Shoemaker

Editing, Production and Sound Design by Russell Shoemaker

Logo Design by Russell Shoemaker

Theme by Russell Shoemaker and Betta Music Pro

Ending Theme by Russell Shoemaker and Underwood Beats

Social Media by Stephanie Duenas and Russell Shoemaker

Newsletter by Stephanie Duenas

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy