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09/08/2026

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Horn Players (1983).

From a crossed-out word to the people behind the music.

Artwork: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Horn Players (1983). The Broad, Los Angeles. © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Photo: Douglas M. Parker Studio, Los Angeles.

Studio portrait: Jean-Michel Basquiat in His Great Jones Street Studio, New York, 1987. Photograph by Tseng Kwong Chi. Muna Tseng Dance Projects, New York & Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, New York. © 1987 Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc., New York. Image via Cleveland Museum of Art.

Film excerpt: Downtown 81 (shot 1980–81; released 2000), a scripted film starring Basquiat. Director: Edo Bertoglio. Writer: Glenn O’Brien. Producer: Maripol. Cinematography: John McNulty. New York Beat Films / Metrograph Pictures; official trailer via Kino Lorber.

Story sources: The Broad, Horn Players; High Museum of Art, The Unknown Notebooks; Dieter Buchhart, Cleveland Museum of Art, Basquiat's Notebooks; Whitney/Menil, 1993 student guide; Dr Jordana Moore Saggese, Smarthistory, Horn Players; Chuck Haddix, Charlie Parker's official biography.

Music: Semi-Funk Kevin MacLeod. Excerpted and mixed under narration.

09/08/2026

Pablo Picasso, Bull’s Head (1942)

A bicycle. A bull. Take a second look.

Artworks: Bull’s Head (1942), original leather saddle and metal handlebars, Musée national Picasso-Paris; Baboon and Young (1951), shown in its original assemblage and bronze casts.

Artwork © Succession Picasso / Estate of Pablo Picasso, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Bull photograph: © GrandPalaisRmn (musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau / distributed by AMF. Image published by the National Art Center, Tokyo.
Original Baboon photographs: Musée national Picasso-Paris, MP342. Mathieu Rabeau / GrandPalaisRmn.
Bull studio photograph (1943): Brassaï, © Estate Brassaï – GrandPalaisRmn. Musée national Picasso-Paris.

Baboon full view: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. Cast 1955.
Baboon head detail: Minneapolis Institute of Art, 55.45. Gift of funds from the John Cowles Foundation.

Research: Musée national Picasso-Paris, MoMA and Mia. Picasso’s imagined return to bicycle parts is recounted by André Malraux, La Tête d’obsidienne (1974), quoted in Musée Picasso’s Bull’s Head educational guide.

Music: “Backbay Lounge” Kevin MacLeod. Excerpted and mixed under narration.

Research, writing and edit: Art Direct.

09/08/2026

Vincent van Gogh, Almond Blossom, 1890

Van Gogh painted this for a baby named after him. That baby grew up to help establish the Van Gogh Museum.

A new beginning, painted for a new life.

Art: Vincent van Gogh, Almond Blossom, 1890. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation). Image: Google Arts & Culture, via Wikimedia Commons.

Family photograph: Raoul Saisset, Jo van Gogh-Bonger with her son Vincent Willem, 1890. Van Gogh Museum, b4822, via Wikimedia Commons.

Adult nephew: Ron Kroon/Anefo, Vincent Willem van Gogh at a museum-building press conference, 11 June 1968. Nationaal Archief,921-4277 (CC0).

Museum exterior: 1970s postcard,via Van Gogh Museum; photographer not identified in source.

Sources: Van Gogh Museum and Van Gogh Letters 847, 855 & 867.

Music: Edvard Grieg, Holberg Suite, Op. 40 — III. Gavotte–Musette–Gavotte (1884; string arrangement 1885). Marine Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Maj. Jason K. Fettig, recorded live 17 August 2013.

09/08/2026

Mark Rothko, Orange and Yellow (1956)

Before the famous rectangles, Mark Rothko was making room for his pupils’ art on museum walls.

The children’s pictures shown here were reproduced in 1934. A small record of a teacher who took their ideas seriously.

Art: Mark Rothko, Orange and Yellow (1956), Buffalo AKG Art Museum; Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1956. © Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Art also shown: The Bathers (1934), National Gallery of Art, Washington; Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. © Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko.

Pupil artworks and archive: anonymous Center Academy pupils, Brooklyn Jewish Center Review, March 1934, pp. 10–11. Digital archive: Brooklyn Jewish Center / Oholei Torah and Jewish Theological Seminary Library, via Internet Archive. These are documented 1934 reproductions, not an identified set from the 1933 Portland exhibition.

Photographs: Sedat Pakay, Mark Rothko (1967), © Sedat Pakay; Rothko in his home studio (late 1945/early 1946), APIC/Getty Images. Both via National Gallery of Art.

Story sources: Marcus Rothkowitz, “New Training For Future Artists and Art Lovers” (1934); National Gallery of Art, Rothko chronology (1998); Portland Art Museum.

“Somewhere Sunny (ver 2)” Kevin MacLeod. Excerpted and mixed under narration.

09/08/2026

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirror Room

Behind this endless room is a very human limit: how much one person can make by hand.

Yayoi Kusama found a way to make her handmade forms repeat, and brought the person looking at them into the picture.

Art and images:
• Yayoi Kusama in Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field, Floor Show, Castellane Gallery, New York, 1965. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: Eikoh Hosoe (identified by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen); image via M+.
• Yayoi Kusama, Untitled (Chair), 1963. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo courtesy: YAYOI KUSAMA FOUNDATION; via M+.
• Yayoi Kusama and architect Alan Buchsbaum, original plan for Phalli’s Field, 3 October 1965. Collection of the artist; via Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, fig. 4a.

Sources: Hirshhorn Museum/Smithsonian, M+, NGV and Machteld Verhulst’s 2022 Boijmans research.

Music: “Hep Cats” — Kevin MacLeod. Excerpted and mixed under narration.

09/08/2026

Jackson Po***ck, Number 1A, 1948

Before you try to untangle the lines, find the hand.

In Jackson Po***ck’s Number 1A, 1948, those handprints came before the brushstrokes and poured paint. A familiar gesture, hiding in a painting that can seem impossible to read.

Artwork: Jackson Po***ck, Number 1A, 1948 (1948), oil and enamel paint on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase, 77.1950. © Po***ck-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Artwork and conservation photographs: MoMA. Research: Jennifer Hickey and James Coddington, MoMA’s Jackson Po***ck Conservation Project (18 July 2013); MoMA collection record.

Film: Jackson Po***ck at work, 1950. © Hans Namuth; courtesy of the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, presented by SFMOMA.

Music: “No Good Layabout” — Kevin MacLeod. Excerpted and mixed under narration. A modern soundtrack inspired by Po***ck’s documented love of jazz.

Story and edit: Art Direct.

***ck ***ck

06/29/2026

Jean-Michel Basquiat 👑

06/25/2026

Wayne Thiebaud is making us hungry 🍰🍭🍧🍮

06/23/2026

David Hockney made joy feel modern.

In ‘A Bigger Splash’, a single burst of water becomes a whole world: California light, stillness, pleasure, and the strange beauty of a moment already gone.

Hockney reminded us that looking closely can be one of life’s great pleasures.

Repost Paul McCartney —David Hockney was a friend and an incredible painter. I knew him during the 1960s and kept a frie...
06/21/2026

Repost Paul McCartney
—
David Hockney was a friend and an incredible painter. I knew him during the 1960s and kept a friendship going till he died on Thursday, the 11th of June. He was very clever witty and fun to be with.

His paintings often gave off a feeling of great joy. Nancy and I enjoyed visiting his studios in California where we took a drive along Mulholland Drive which he made famous all over again in his sensational paintings.

Or in his London studio. The rooms were filled with paintings. Often some of the most recent pictures that he had done. He would talk about them and his very particular views on art. He felt that it was important to see correctly. He wasn’t a great fan of perspective and was always involved in inventing new ways to view the world. His many paintings, drawings, films and other media like iPad drawing he took readily to and mastered.

He was a serious Chain Smoker and believed it was everyone’s right to smoke like the days when he and I had been brought up in smoke filled rooms. We visited him once in Bridlington, Yorkshire. He met us at the train station and drove us to his house in a smoke filled car.

We will miss his fabulous personality, his laconic wit and his erudite views on how to look at the world.

Rest in peace, David. We love you. 

Paul

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