Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History

James William Moore
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Visual Arts
  • Updated Weekly

Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History is where masterpieces meet mayhem. Join artist and educator James William Moore for fast, funny journeys through the artists, movements, mysteries, scandals, and strokes of genius that shaped the art world. From missing masterpieces and artistic rivalries to radical ideas that changed how we see, each bite-sized episode brings art history to life with sharp insight, irreverent humor, and just the right amount of chaos. Perfection is overrated. History is messy. And that is where art happens.

  1. 4d ago

    Winged Victory of Samothrace: The Mystery of the Missing Head

    Walk into the Louvre, turn toward the grand Daru staircase, and there she is: wings spread, marble drapery whipped by an invisible sea wind, standing triumphantly on the prow of a ship. The Winged Victory of Samothrace—La Victoire de Samothrace—is one of the most recognizable sculptures in the world. There is just one fairly significant problem: she doesn’t have a head, and nobody knows where it is. In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, presented by J-Squared Atelier, James investigates the disappearance of Victory’s face. Follow the sculpture from its creation in ancient Greece through its discovery in more than a hundred fragments, Charles Champoiseau’s unsuccessful return expedition, and the remarkable recovery of pieces from the goddess’s missing hand. Yes, archaeologists found part of one finger, waited seventy-five years, and found another piece of the same finger. But the entire marble head? Nothing. What might Victory’s missing face have revealed—and what would happen if it were discovered tomorrow? More than 160 years after the sculpture arrived at the Louvre, its absence has become part of its identity. Without a face, the wings become her expression, the drapery becomes emotion, and the goddess becomes something larger than an individual figure. Perhaps the missing piece is part of the reason we cannot stop looking. Send us a Note! Let us know what you think! J-Squared Atelier, LLCfor the love of artDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Send us a text Don't miss the video podcast version on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify!!! Follow & Subscribe to Art Happens Connect with Us: J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier) 🌐 Website: J2 Atelier 📸 Instagram: @J2Atelier James William Moore 🌐 Website: James William Moore 📸 Instagram: @the_jwmartist Catch Lattes & Art, our sister podcast—coffee-fueled conversations with artists about process, inspiration, and the beautiful mess behind the work. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...

    Winged Victory of Samothrace: The Mystery of the Missing Head

  2. Oct 12

    Edvard Munch's The Scream: What if the Figure Isn't Screaming?

    You know the face: hands pressed against the head, eyes wide, mouth open, and a blood-red sky twisting behind it. Edvard Munch’s The Scream has been parodied, memed, printed on mugs, and transformed into the international symbol for “I am not handling this well.” But what if the figure isn’t screaming? In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, presented by J-Squared Atelier, James looks beyond the famous face to uncover what makes The Scream so unsettling. The figure may be covering its ears—overwhelmed by what Munch described as an enormous scream passing through nature itself. Explore Munch’s experiences with grief, illness, anxiety, and isolation; the multiple versions of his masterpiece; and the revolutionary way he transformed color, line, landscape, and distortion into pure psychological emotion. There is no visible monster or attacker. Instead, the entire world seems to be having a breakdown. Munch didn’t simply paint what fear looks like. He painted what it feels like when anxiety escapes the body—and infects the entire universe. Send us a Note! Let us know what you think! Send us a text Don't miss the video podcast version on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify!!! Follow & Subscribe to Art Happens Connect with Us: J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier) 🌐 Website: J2 Atelier 📸 Instagram: @J2Atelier James William Moore 🌐 Website: James William Moore 📸 Instagram: @the_jwmartist Catch Lattes & Art, our sister podcast—coffee-fueled conversations with artists about process, inspiration, and the beautiful mess behind the work. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...

    Edvard Munch's The Scream: What if the Figure Isn't Screaming?

  3. Oct 5

    Francisco Goya: When The Lights Went Out

    Francisco Goya painted kings, queens, duchesses, and children dressed in silk. He became one of Spain’s most celebrated royal court painters. Then he painted witches, executions, war crimes, mutilated bodies—and Saturn devouring his own child. So what happened? In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, presented by J-Squared Atelier, James follows Goya’s extraordinary journey from cheerful tapestry designs and glittering royal portraits to Los Caprichos, The Disasters of War, The Third of May 1808, and the haunting Black Paintings he created on the walls of his own home. Along the way, Goya survived a life-altering illness, lost his hearing, witnessed Napoleon’s brutal invasion of Spain, and watched reason, power, and political order collapse around him. His art stopped flattering humanity and began exposing what it was capable of—superstition, cruelty, organized violence, and monsters that did not always need wings. Was Goya losing faith in humanity, or was he simply one of the first artists willing to show us what humanity really looked like? Send us a Note! Let us know what you think! J-Squared Atelier, LLCfor the love of artDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Send us a text Don't miss the video podcast version on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify!!! Follow & Subscribe to Art Happens Connect with Us: J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier) 🌐 Website: J2 Atelier 📸 Instagram: @J2Atelier James William Moore 🌐 Website: James William Moore 📸 Instagram: @the_jwmartist Catch Lattes & Art, our sister podcast—coffee-fueled conversations with artists about process, inspiration, and the beautiful mess behind the work. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...

    Francisco Goya: When The Lights Went Out

  4. Sep 28

    The Amber Room: The Eighth Wonder that Vanished

    How do you lose an entire room? Not just any room, either. The Amber Room was an eighteenth-century masterpiece made from tons of carved amber, gold, mirrors, and mosaics—a glittering royal treasure so spectacular it became known as the Eighth Wonder of the World. Then the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. German troops stripped the room from the Catherine Palace in roughly thirty-six hours, packed it into twenty-seven crates, and carried it away. After being reassembled and displayed in Königsberg Castle, the Amber Room vanished during the final chaos of World War II. Did it burn? Was it buried inside a secret bunker? Hidden beneath a ruined castle? Or loaded onto a ship now resting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea? In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, James follows one of history’s greatest missing-art mysteries through royal extravagance, Nazi cultural looting, treasure hunters, shipwrecks, and decades of tantalizing theories. He also steps inside the extraordinary reconstruction that now stands in the Catherine Palace—and asks whether rebuilding a masterpiece can ever truly replace what war destroyed. Sponsored by J2 Atelier. Send us a Note! Let us know what you think! Send us a text Don't miss the video podcast version on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify!!! Follow & Subscribe to Art Happens Connect with Us: J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier) 🌐 Website: J2 Atelier 📸 Instagram: @J2Atelier James William Moore 🌐 Website: James William Moore 📸 Instagram: @the_jwmartist Catch Lattes & Art, our sister podcast—coffee-fueled conversations with artists about process, inspiration, and the beautiful mess behind the work. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...

    The Amber Room: The Eighth Wonder that Vanished

  5. Sep 21

    The 1913 Armory Show: Modern Art Scandalizes the United States

    In February 1913, Americans paid twenty-five cents to enter a New York military armory and discover that art had apparently lost its mind. The women were blue, the bodies were geometric, perspective was broken, and Marcel Duchamp had sent a nude down a staircase—although no one could find the nude or, for that matter, the staircase. In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, James explores the 1913 Armory Show, the exhibition that introduced a massive American audience to European modernism. Encounter the radical colors of Henri Matisse, the fractured figures of Cubism, and Duchamp’s notorious Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2—the painting America mocked, parodied, condemned, and lined up to see. Former President Theodore Roosevelt called the movement a “lunatic fringe,” newspapers treated modern art like a national emergency, and curious crowds kept buying tickets. Somewhere along the way, the outrage backfired: collectors started buying, artists discovered new possibilities, and modernism became impossible to ignore. The Armory Show didn’t make the people of the United States love modern art. It did something far more disruptive—it kicked open the door to everything that came next. Send us a Note! Let us know what you think! J-Squared Atelier, LLCfor the love of artDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Send us a text Don't miss the video podcast version on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify!!! Follow & Subscribe to Art Happens Connect with Us: J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier) 🌐 Website: J2 Atelier 📸 Instagram: @J2Atelier James William Moore 🌐 Website: James William Moore 📸 Instagram: @the_jwmartist Catch Lattes & Art, our sister podcast—coffee-fueled conversations with artists about process, inspiration, and the beautiful mess behind the work. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...

    The 1913 Armory Show: Modern Art Scandalizes the United States

  6. Sep 14

    Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills: The Movies That Don't Exist

    A nervous woman glances over her shoulder. A lonely figure stares through a window. A young ingénue arrives in the city with a suitcase—and somehow, you already think you know what happens next. Between 1977 and 1980, Cindy Sherman created 69 black-and-white photographs inspired by the visual language of classic cinema. But these aren’t stills from real movies, and Sherman isn’t playing actual characters. She gives us costumes, poses, and familiar stereotypes—then lets our own cultural programming write the plots. In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, James explores how Untitled Film Stills turns the camera on Hollywood’s portrayals of women, the male gaze, and the audience itself. Sherman serves as photographer, director, stylist, performer, and subject—appearing in every image while somehow disappearing behind every role. Long before Instagram taught us to pose, crop, filter, and manufacture our identities, Sherman understood that photographs don’t simply show us who people are. They can teach us who we expect them to be. Cindy Sherman didn’t make the movies. She proved we’d already seen them. Send us a Note! Let us know what you think! J-Squared Atelier, LLCfor the love of artDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Send us a text Don't miss the video podcast version on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify!!! Follow & Subscribe to Art Happens Connect with Us: J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier) 🌐 Website: J2 Atelier 📸 Instagram: @J2Atelier James William Moore 🌐 Website: James William Moore 📸 Instagram: @the_jwmartist Catch Lattes & Art, our sister podcast—coffee-fueled conversations with artists about process, inspiration, and the beautiful mess behind the work. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...

    Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills: The Movies That Don't Exist

  7. Sep 7

    Constructivism: Art Builds a New World (Movement in about Ten Minutes)

    A revolution has overturned the government, the economy, and nearly every reliable plan for next Tuesday. The old world is gone. Now someone has to design the new one. In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, James explores Russian Constructivism—the radical movement that wanted art to leave the museum, enter everyday life, and get a job. Its artists traded precious masterpieces for industrial materials, photography, posters, clothing, theater sets, furniture, and the ambitious belief that design could help build a new society. Meet Vladimir Tatlin and his spectacularly impractical rotating tower; Aleksandr Rodchenko, who declared painting finished and began photographing the world from startling new angles; and Liubov Popova and Varvara Stepanova, whose groundbreaking work brought Constructivism into theater, textiles, fashion, and mass production. It’s a story of revolutionary optimism, bold graphics, impossible architecture, and the dangerous moment when artists who set out to serve a revolution discover that the revolution gets to decide what “service” means. The Constructivists never built their perfect world—but they gave modernity one of its loudest visual identities. Send us a Note! Let us know what you think! J-Squared Atelier, LLCfor the love of artDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Send us a text Don't miss the video podcast version on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify!!! Follow & Subscribe to Art Happens Connect with Us: J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier) 🌐 Website: J2 Atelier 📸 Instagram: @J2Atelier James William Moore 🌐 Website: James William Moore 📸 Instagram: @the_jwmartist Catch Lattes & Art, our sister podcast—coffee-fueled conversations with artists about process, inspiration, and the beautiful mess behind the work. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...

    Constructivism: Art Builds a New World (Movement in about Ten Minutes)

  8. Aug 31

    Marcel Duchamp: The Man Who Broke Art (Artist Spotlight)

    Marcel Duchamp could paint. He understood perspective, composition, Cubism, and the rules of art history—and then he decided those rules were optional. Inspired by MoMA’s sweeping Duchamp retrospective, James explores nearly six decades of work by one of modern art’s most disruptive figures. The exhibition moves from Duchamp’s early paintings and drawings through readymades, mechanical contraptions, optical experiments, wordplay, alter egos, and the mysterious installation he constructed in secret for roughly twenty years. Together, these works reveal that the infamous urinal was never the whole story. Duchamp’s real masterpiece may have been the question he left behind: What makes something art—and who gets to decide? Along the way, we encounter Nude Descending a Staircase, a bicycle wheel, Mona Lisa’s mustache, the cracked and complicated Large Glass, Rrose Sélavy, chess, chance, desire, a unrinal, and an artist who made refusing expectations into an art form of its own. If you want to spend more time with the urinal, be sure to listen to Season 1, Episode 13, our deep dive into Duchamp’s Fountain. You can follow this link: Marcel Duchamp The Fountain. And, if you’ve ever stood in a museum and asked, “Why is that art?” congratulations: Marcel Duchamp is still messing with you. Send us a Note! Let us know what you think! J-Squared Atelier, LLCfor the love of artDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Send us a text Don't miss the video podcast version on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify!!! Follow & Subscribe to Art Happens Connect with Us: J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier) 🌐 Website: J2 Atelier 📸 Instagram: @J2Atelier James William Moore 🌐 Website: James William Moore 📸 Instagram: @the_jwmartist Catch Lattes & Art, our sister podcast—coffee-fueled conversations with artists about process, inspiration, and the beautiful mess behind the work. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...

    Marcel Duchamp: The Man Who Broke Art (Artist Spotlight)
See All (46)

About

Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History is where masterpieces meet mayhem. Join artist and educator James William Moore for fast, funny journeys through the artists, movements, mysteries, scandals, and strokes of genius that shaped the art world. From missing masterpieces and artistic rivalries to radical ideas that changed how we see, each bite-sized episode brings art history to life with sharp insight, irreverent humor, and just the right amount of chaos. Perfection is overrated. History is messy. And that is where art happens.

Information

You Might Also Like