Dr Great Art! Short, Fun Art History Artecdotes!
76 episodes - English - Latest episode: 10 months ago - ★★★★★ - 16 ratingsDr Great Art! (Sometimes even with a "?"), Short, Fun, Art History Artecdotes. Through his podcasts and performance-lecture installations, artist and art historian Dr Mark Staff Brandl takes viewers inside visual art,art history, and visual metaphor theory. Entertainingly, yet educationally and aesthetically he presents and discusses stimulating tidbits of knowledge. Brandl stands for an understanding of art in which art historical knowledge and aesthetic pleasure merge into a new artistic experience.
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Episodes
Episode 76: Brandl Interviewed by Dan Hill
July 04, 2023 11:12 - 33 minutes - 28.1 MBThis is a crossover episode, it is a short interview Dan Hill made on his EQ Spotlight podcast with me, Mark Staff Brandl, about my book A Philosophy of Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art. Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight podcast link: https://www.sensorylogic.com/eq-spotlight-podcast Link to page for my book on Bloomsbury Press: US: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/philosophy-of-visual-metaphor-in-contemporary-art-9781350073838/ Europe: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/philosophy-of-visual-metaph...
Episode 75: Visual Metaphor the Back Cover
April 17, 2023 16:54 - 13 minutes - 9.47 MBLast episode, I discussed the ins-and-outs of the front cover of my new book from Bloomsbury Press, A Philosophy of Visual metaphor in Contemporary Art. This episode we have a few discussion points about the recommendation blurbs on the back cover by three very important and creative scholars Dr Daniel F. Ammann, Dr James Elkins, and Dr Philip Ursprung. Link to page for the book on Bloomsbury Press: US: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/philosophy-of-visual-metaphor-in-contemporary-art-97...
Episode 74: I'm Back! Visual Metaphor
March 19, 2023 11:38 - 8 minutes - 5.58 MBThe podcast is back after a break of about one year. I was extremely wrapping up my book titled A Philosophy of Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art for Bloomsbury Press. This is the first of an arc of podcast episodes where I will be working my way somewhat improvisationally through the book. Not reading it out-loud, though. I will go through and find certain details, points, examples, artists and ideas that I want to expand on or use as springboards. Bloomsbury link: https://www.bloomsbu...
Episode 73: No Back to Normal in Art
January 18, 2022 14:21 - 8 minutes - 5.52 MBCatastrophes, such as the Covid pandemic, don't cause problems and breakdowns in society as much as reveal and intensify the problems already present. The coronavirus crisis has accelerated already existing troubles in the artworld. Normal was not all that great anyway, and to revive it as a zombie would be even worse.
Episode 72: Design vs Fine Art
August 04, 2021 13:06 - 12 minutes - 9.65 MBA new Dr Great Art Podcast Episode 72: Design vs Fine Art After a 7 month break, I'm back. My artecdote this time is concerns differentiating the ontological state of design versus that of fine art without denigrating either. They are different. It has to do with purposeful polysemy.
Episode 71: Santa's Look Reprise
December 11, 2020 12:16 - 8 minutes - 6.38 MBChristmas time! A Dr Great Art podcast about how Santa Claus LOOKS --- the history of his visual appearance. St. Nicholas, Thomas Nast, Fred Mizen, Coca-Cola, Luther, the Orthodox Santa, "Twas the Night Before Christmas," Puritans, Nazis and more including the Swiss Samichlaus and Schmutzli This is the 71st Dr Great Art podcast, a reprise from way back, podcast number 5. In this troublesome time of Covid, Lockdowns and the attempted fascist takeovers of the US and the UK still in progress, l...
Episode 70: The Grammar of Visual Metaphors Part 3 of 3.
December 02, 2020 10:48 - 40 minutes - 26.7 MBThe New Dr Great Art Podcast, Episode 70. The Grammar of Visual Metaphors Part 3 of 3. The third of three parts of a breakdown of the fourth chapter from my in-the-works philosophy book for Bloomsbury Press titled 'Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art and Analytic Philosophy.' Conceptual Blending, Foundational Metaphors and Allusciviousness in visual metaphors. Sonya Clark, William Conger, and more.
Episode 69: The Grammar of Visual Metaphors Part 2 of 3.
November 21, 2020 10:38 - 22 minutes - 15.4 MBThe New Dr Great Art Podcast, Episode 69. The Grammar of Visual Metaphors Part 2 of 3. The second of three parts of a breakdown of the fourth chapter from my in-the-works philosophy book for Bloomsbury Press titled 'Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art and Analytic Philosophy.' Trope: including metaphor, metonymy, simile, synecdoche, litotes, hyperbole, irony, analogy, allegory, symbol, metalepsis and so on. Visual metaphors are not linguistic, nor illustrations of them; they are more deeply ...
Episode 68: The Grammar of Visual Metaphors Part 1 of 3.
November 01, 2020 13:10 - 25 minutes - 17 MBThe first of three parts of a breakdown of the fourth chapter from my in-the-works philosophy book for Bloomsbury Press titled 'Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art and Analytic Philosophy.' Is there a set of structural rules governing the creation of visual metaphors by artists that parallels the conventions of linguistic grammar? Analytic philosophy, Literary theory, cognitive metaphor theory, Anti-Positivism, Similarities and more interesting dissimilarities between linguistic and visual t...
Episode 67: Why Visual Metaphors Matter, Part 3 of 3
October 19, 2020 15:36 - 21 minutes - 14.7 MBThe third of three parts of a breakdown of the third chapter from my in-the-works philosophy book for Bloomsbury Press tentatively titled 'Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art and Analytic Philosophy.' Philosophy affects our ways of living, and more important to this book, it affects or artistic production, even when we are not completely cognizant of this. Visual trope production is how contemporary artists achieve what they do.
Episode 66: Why Visual Metaphors Matter, Part 2 of 3
October 14, 2020 10:17 - 18 minutes - 12.6 MBThe second of three parts of a breakdown of the third chapter from my in-the-works philosophy book for Bloomsbury Press tentatively titled 'Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art and Analytic Philosophy.' Philosophy affects our ways of living, and more important to this book, it affects or artistic production, even when we are not completely cognizant of this. Visual trope production is how contemporary artists achieve what they do.
Episode 65: Why Visual Metaphors Matter, Part 1 of 3
October 05, 2020 14:49 - 20 minutes - 13.5 MBThe first of three parts of a breakdown of the third chapter from my in-the-works philosophy book for Bloomsbury Press tentatively titled 'Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art and Analytic Philosophy.' Philosophy affects our ways of living, and more important to this book, it affects or artistic production, even when we are not completely cognizant of this. Visual trope production is how contemporary artists achieve what they do.
Episode 64: Visual Metaphor, Part 3 (Chp 2)
June 14, 2020 13:43 - 16 minutes - 11.6 MBThe third of three parts of a breakdown of the second chapter from my in-the-works philosophy book for Bloomsbury Press for the "Aesthetics and Contemporary Art" Series, titled Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art and Analytic Philosophy. A discussion of what visual metaphor is. This is Part 3 of 3 episodes covering this chapter.
Episode 63: Visual Metaphor, Part 2 (Chp 2)
May 10, 2020 14:03 - 20 minutes - 14.3 MBThe second of three parts of a breakdown of the second chapter from my in-the-works philosophy book for Bloomsbury Press for the "Aesthetics and Contemporary Art" Series, titled Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art and Analytic Philosophy. A discussion of what visual metaphor is. This is Part 2 of 3 episodes covering this chapter.
Episode 62: Visual Metaphor, What is It? (Chp 2)
April 16, 2020 17:02 - 16 minutes - 11.5 MBA breakdown of the second chapter from my in-the-works philosophy book for Bloomsbury Press for the "Aesthetics and Contemporary Art" Series, titled Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art and Analytic Philosophy. A discussion of what visual metaphor is. This is Part 1 of 3 episodes covering this chapter.
Episode 61: Corona Pandemic Online Discussions
March 18, 2020 14:55 - 3 minutes - 2.47 MBSince we have to keep a certain social-distancing in real life, social contact online is important. I am inviting all to join me in online streaming "live" art history and art discussions. Skype (mark.staff.brandl), Facebook ("Mark Staff Brandl" or "Dr Great Art"), or Microsoft Teams. Contact me at Facebook Messenger or the Dr Great Art Email to set up a time.
Episode 60: Mini Episode Picasso
January 11, 2020 16:09 - 4 minutes - 3.02 MBA shorter episode, I call a "mini." This time with interesting little facts about Pablo Picasso.
Episode 59: Metaphor, What is It? (Chp 1)
November 25, 2019 19:05 - 27 minutes - 25.6 MBA cursory breakdown of the first chapter from my in-the-works philosophy book for Bloomsbury Press for the "Aesthetics and Contemporary Art" Series, tentatively titled Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art and Analytic Philosophy. A discussion of what metaphor is, in general, as a lead up to my philosophy of visual metaphor.
Episode 58: The Blues Got Me
October 20, 2019 09:10 - 9 minutes - 8.91 MBThe Blues ethos as a strategy of persistence against melancholy. The Life Blues got me. I had a few slaps upside the head and they affect my art inspiration and production.
Episode 57: (Im)Maturity in Art
September 29, 2019 18:31 - 8 minutes - 7.94 MBImmaturity, maturity, and the desire for the latter in art and the repression of that desire in culture at large.
Episode 56: Academicism in Art
September 01, 2019 14:23 - 12 minutes - 11.1 MBAn 'academicist' in the arts is someone who over-idealizes the art academy; one who follows the precepts taught there and insists others do so as well. Here is a short history of academicism and thoughts about the problem now.
Episode 55: Epistemology in Art
August 16, 2019 11:40 - 11 minutes - 10.1 MBEpistemology: the philosophical analysis of the search for knowledge. Does it exist in art? How and what can we know? Will it replace the ubiquitous ontological expressions in Postmodernism?
Episode 54: Grief in Art
July 23, 2019 14:23 - 6 minutes - 6.24 MBA short, yet gloomy, podcast for summer. My mother Ruth Staff Brandl passed away very recently at the age of 87. In this tough, sad time, my mind still approaches the world through art, yet I find it hard to find any comfort therein. In our artworld nowadays, it seems almost ridiculous. Grief, though, like most important and complex human emotions, has been the subject or inspiration for many great works of art Her obituary is at: http://brandl-art-articles.blogspot.com/2019/07/ruth-staff-...
Episode 53: Dictatorship of the Consensoriat
May 31, 2019 13:14 - 6 minutes - 6.22 MBThe creation of a term for one of the problems in the artworld, one very obvious around June each year when we all go to the Basel Art Fair, often the Venice Biennale, documenta etc. A phrase for the convenient conformity of (small) minds to have identical tastes in order to achieve hegemony.
Episode 52: Julia Kristeva, Metaphor as Resistance
May 12, 2019 13:35 - 7 minutes - 6.45 MBJulia Kristeva, the Bulgarian-French philosopher, offers in her theorization hope for resistance against ruling ideologies within artworks themselves. Artists can produce "openings" by creating metaphors through serious play, turning rules upside down, displaying pleasure, laughter and poetry which include thoughtful critique --- delightful, anarchistic, alternative visions that are embodiments of and empower other forms of resistance.
Episode 51: Bluesman of Art
April 27, 2019 15:02 - 9 minutes - 9 MBDr Cornel West has described himself as a "Bluesman in the life of the mind, and a Jazzman in the world of ideas." I feel similarly, I am a Bluesman of the mind, a Rock n Roller of painting and installations, a sequential-artist/comic-book penciler of art history.
Episode 50: Petr Brandl, Prague and Me
April 14, 2019 14:11 - 13 minutes - 12.2 MBFIFTY! Petr Brandl, the once very famous Baroque painter from Bohemia/Czech Republic and my distant ancestor. And a Festival Brandl with Geisslers Hofcomoedianten in Prague!
Episode 49: Performance-Paintings
March 03, 2019 17:35 - 12 minutes - 11.1 MBPeaceable Kingdom, Georama, Kamishibai. Edward Hicks, John Banvard, Toba Sojo. Inspirations and antecedants for my Dr Great Art performance-lecture paintings.
Episode 48: Artists' Side Jobs
February 01, 2019 15:13 - 20 minutes - 18.5 MBThis podcast episode concerns something important to many artists, yet seldom openly discussed. That is, what "side jobs" artists have to do to stay alive. Many do not want to admit to this AT ALL.
Episode 47: Braid Model of Art History
December 30, 2018 12:25 - 14 minutes - 13.5 MBThe future art is not posthistorical, but rather polyhistorical, plurogenic (multistrand), not monogenic (single strand). There are various models and/or master narratives of art history, from the immensely limited discussion of the traditional narrow canon to timorous avoidance of any timeline due to postmodern guilt, treating artworks as mere stand-ins for particular ideologies. The late art critic John Perreault and I have created a new, more transparent model: the Braid, or Braided Rope....
Episode 46: Color in Art
November 28, 2018 19:04 - 13 minutes - 12.1 MBSome scattered reflections on the complex role of color in art including several things that bother me regularly in purportedly theoretical discussions of it. Color is wonderful, and necessary, but it is a happily difficult entity for theory.
Episode 45: The Role of Hope in Art
November 04, 2018 17:02 - 10 minutes - 9.45 MBIt’s difficult to look into the future with any hope. What IS the role of hope in art? To me, it is all important.
Episode 44: Mikhail Bakhtin, Dialogic Form and Metaphor
October 06, 2018 19:04 - 10 minutes - 9.16 MBBakhtinian notions which could serve as great inspiration for visual art include his sense of the living fluidity of expression; his concepts of heteroglossia, polyphonic form, and dialogic form; his insight that these may engender the liberation of alternative voices; and his presentation of the carnival as a suggestive metaphor.
Episode 43: Neo-Conceptualism, the Term
September 16, 2018 15:18 - 7 minutes - 7.31 MBThis episode's artecdote clarifies the historical terminology for the dominant Postmodernist art movement since circa 1985: 'Neo-Conceptualism.' Neo-Conceptualists themselves generally try to refer to themselves with the earlier term as 'Conceptualists,' but this is a political ploy, an ahistorical part of a powerplay, pretending that they are a part of the movement form which they derive.
Episode 42: Defining Visual Metaphor
August 26, 2018 12:04 - 7 minutes - 6.97 MBThis episode, I give my definition of visual metaphor. This is a new area of scholarly interest, and there have been few attempts to clearly describe visual metaphor or trope. This is an important foundational action and idea for the book on visual metaphor and contemporary art I am in the process of writing.
Episode 41: Lawrence Weiner, Conceptual Art, and Metaphor
August 10, 2018 18:52 - 9 minutes - 8.83 MBConceptual Artist Lawrence Weiner is quite fond of formulating statements in which he claims to have dismissed metaphor from his artwork. He is completely wrong. No matter what is claimed, Lawrence Weiner's art, and most Conceptual Art and Neo-Conceptual Art, whether good or bad, is deeply grounded in interlocking base metaphors; metaphors commonly ignored because they are so transparent.
Episode 40: Goya's Anti-Academicist Speech
July 09, 2018 11:27 - 9 minutes - 8.94 MBGoya's amazing speech to the newly founded Spanish Art Academy School. He was invited to speak to them as he was well-respected and was interested in helping other artists learn. Yet he had a profound dislike and fear of Academicism. Not only one of the best artists of all history, but was an independent and socially critical thinker, although he was court painter. Academics are scholars, and he and I are not criticizing them or their practice, rather AcademICISM, which is the worship of the...
Episode 39: Copying in Art
June 18, 2018 18:20 - 12 minutes - 11.6 MBThe phenomenon of artists copying each other and themselves (not forgeries, copies). Something thoroughly disdained since Modernism, yet an activity that was important before that, for learning, out of admiration, for expanding an audience, for additional income. And some thoughts about the situation now.
Episode 38: New Historicism in Art
June 04, 2018 16:11 - 10 minutes - 9.18 MBNew Historicism or alternately Cultural Materialism, and how its ideas are auspicious for visual metaphor, art history and conceptions of context in visual art. Art History consists of multiple histories, discontinuous and contradictory ones. The heretical response to authoritarian demand is important. Works of art express the problems and alienation of our or any time and place, but also frequently offer expressions of fullness that attack that alienation and help shatter the incrustations ...
Episode 37: Originality in Art
May 21, 2018 15:13 - 12 minutes - 11 MBDoes originality in art even exist? A Matt Ballou listener request. "Make it new!" has certainly become old. Yet, the Postmodernist demand that a lack of originality be heralded as something new is duplicitous. A discussion of originality in art.
Episode 36: Paintings and Novels are Quintessentially Antithetical
May 05, 2018 16:31 - 11 minutes - 10.1 MBPaintings and novels, far from being hidebound, as is often squawked, are quintessentially antithetical: excellent disciplines for new metaphoric thought. They are ideally adversarial. They incorporate, use and criticize. They have achieved a condition of being perpetually "genres undermined." They have been in a permanent state of crisis for a minimum of several hundred years. What more could one ask for as a difficult, challenging and rewarding fray?
Episode 35: Lakoff, Art and Cognitive Metaphor
April 21, 2018 18:35 - 10 minutes - 9.54 MBMetaphor is the basis of thought, which importantly arises from bodily, cultural and environmental experience. It is embodied in the body, in the world and in the expressions of it, such as visual art. Metaphors we live and create by.
Episode 34: Artistic Agon
April 07, 2018 19:42 - 11 minutes - 10.8 MBArtists are directly responsible for fashioning their own tropes through the processes of extension, elaboration, composition and/or questioning. They must wrestle with their precursors, who inspired them to be creators in the first place, to do this. Such dialectical struggle, called an 'agon,' is more than simply oedipal. The African spirit Eshu, the trickster patron saint of crossroads, and Jacob, who struggled with God in the Bible, make better metaphoric models than Oedipus.
Episode 33: Michelangelo's Forgery
March 21, 2018 16:40 - 6 minutes - 5.73 MBThere is a somewhat frequently-heard accusation that Michelangelo forged ancient Roman sculpture at the start of his career. Here is the truth.
Episode 32: Telltales Show
March 04, 2018 14:19 - 9 minutes - 8.32 MBHow is history constructed? Who makes history? And what will remain in the future from us and our culture? What is the truth? What is fabrication? Isn’t a well-told tale more exciting than simple data and facts? Facts are extremely important. Not everything goes --- yet all facts and sources of facts must be closely examined and often criticized. (Art) HistorIES.
Episode 31: 3 Useful Feminist Ideas for Art
February 13, 2018 10:24 - 5 minutes - 5.03 MBA short podcast presenting three ideas from Feminist philosophy useful for art and metaphor: pragmatic action over absolutism, the located self, and finding loopholes in hegemonies to allow creative resistance.
Episode 30: Trope and Metaphor
January 27, 2018 20:32 - 8 minutes - 8.13 MBA podcast in preparation for discussions of visual metaphor: one aspect of terminology, trope and metaphor.
Episode 29: 7 Fun Facts in Art History
January 07, 2018 15:47 - 7 minutes - 7.18 MBA lighter episode relating seven stimulating facts about Vincent van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Georgia O'Keeffe.
Episode 28: Sophistry in Art
December 26, 2017 13:37 - 6 minutes - 6.22 MBThis episode concerns a troublesome yet seldom acknowledged tendency in the artworld: Sophistry. Why are you in this struggle? Are you an artist or critic or curator simply for careerist "success"? Weren't you actually CALLED to art?
Episode 27: Models are Not Master Narratives
December 06, 2017 17:25 - 9 minutes - 8.57 MBThis episode's Artecdote is an explanation of my assertion that art history models are not necessarily master narratives. Art History is often told in versions of one linear story, thus a master narrative. This often delimits thought, sustains oppressive systems and purports to be the truth, allowing no exceptions. On the other hand, the stringent fear of modeling has sometimes lead the less inventive to fall into the simple nihilism of "I give up." In fact, models are important dialogical t...