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OH MY GOD SANTA!
155 Plays3 years ago
Ho ho ho! This episode of Artpop Talk is about the Big Man, Scott Calvin, Kris Kringle, Sinterklaas, Pere Noel, Babbo Natale, SANTA CLAUS… and the evolution of the “Santa aesthetic” that we know today. Bianca will also be talking with us about her recent trip to the Arthur M Sackler Museum at Harvard, The Harvard Museum of Natural History, and The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
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Transcript
Introduction and New Year's Resolutions
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, hello, and welcome to Art Pop Talk. I'm Bianca. And I'm Gianna. Gianna, are you a New Year's resolution kind of gal? No, I'd say I'm more of a sad girl Christmas station kind of gal.
00:00:16
Speaker
However, I am excited to embark on the new year of APT. I know it's wild going into 2022 to ring in the new year.
Holiday-Themed Content and Santa Claus
00:00:28
Speaker
We are serving up some holiday content today, discussing Christmas, its history, and what's to do with Santa. All I would want for this episode of APT is for Jim Gaffigan, the Hot Pocket Tartlet.
00:00:42
Speaker
to talk about the absurdity of holidays with us. But alas, let's arc pop talk. Hello, hello! Bianca, I just have to say, I think given Jim Gaffigan's stand-up and his cute little story-tellings that he does on CBS Sunday morning, I think he would really like the 8pt vibe.
00:01:05
Speaker
No, I think so too. I think we're definitely on the same page and you're totally right. He would be the perfect guest to have if we were talking about odd holiday traditions. So true. The Easter one, chef's kiss. Oh yeah, Easter. Yeah. Also the one about Valentine's Day, like, ah, I got the chocolate filled with toothpaste. Do you like those little Valentine's candies?
00:01:32
Speaker
Have you talked about this before? I don't know. If you just get a bad, cheap one, it's just so not worth it. You either have to do it or don't do it at all, but I don't like chocolates filled with, I don't know, weird other kind of creamy fillings, which is I feel like what he refers to as the toothpaste filling. I'm not a mint chocolate kind of gal, but I do like coconut and caramel.
00:01:59
Speaker
Yeah, speaking of little boxes of chocolate, I went to LA Burdick here in Boston yesterday. And I mean, it's one of those things where they like flaunt that they have one of their rated one of the best hot chocolates in the world.
00:02:18
Speaker
And it was pretty delicious. They call it, it's so cute, they call it drinking chocolate on their menu. Congratulations, you did it. World's best cup of coffee.
00:02:31
Speaker
Is that what you did when you went in there? You know, that's not what I did. But the hot chocolate was, I mean, it was very delicious. It was kind of like, I don't want to say French style hot chocolate, if you've ever had that. It was still like a little thinner than that, but it was very tasty. But it was just, I think it was just one of those things where
00:02:55
Speaker
You know, it's hot chocolate season, so people are talking about LA Burdick's hot chocolate. And it, like, I'm not trying to say it wasn't good, it was so delicious. But it's one of those things that the hype was like, so intense. And literally, as we were standing in line, this woman is like talking about how this is the most amazing hot chocolate in the entire world. It was very good. And it was very cute. It was just like, ooh, yeah, this is good chocolate. I don't know.
00:03:17
Speaker
Also, speaking of chocolate, there is this guy that comes up on my Instagram a lot and he makes these like a really cool chocolate sculptures. But now he has his own Netflix special. Yes, I follow him. Yeah. And so I haven't watched it yet. I've kind of been waiting. I thought maybe when you come home, that could be something
00:03:37
Speaker
I watched two episodes. Is it good? Yeah, it's so sweet because it's not like an American style show where it's chopped or whatever and people are getting kicked off or whatever.
Art News: The Sackler Family and the Met Museum
00:03:50
Speaker
He's so nice and he's like, I just want you to do better and it's so cute. He's just so nice and then the people who are struggling, he gets one-on-one time with them and then he'll like,
00:04:00
Speaker
their little, you know, sous chef or something like that, like whenever they're like working together because he just wants them to succeed. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't watched it yet. I've been waiting for the right mood to watch it.
00:04:14
Speaker
Yeah, I've been it's one of those things I've kind of had on the background. Well, is there any any other updates you have how we get into some art news? No, no updates that I can share right now. I may have some updates when we come back from the holiday season and
00:04:31
Speaker
Stay tuned for the end of the episode because Bianca and I will talk to you a little bit more about drunk art history. Yes. Today's art news, Gianna, I'm now trying to say that APT is the cause of this art news, but whatever, Turlet is working at the Met. If you could just credit APT.
00:04:55
Speaker
That would be great. We're just here to steal your thunder. Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. So Gianna is going to give some art news about the Big Sackler Met news that dropped this past week. And then after that, I'm kind of going to give a recap of my museum weekend because it definitely piggybacks off of art news and definitely our conversation last week and last episode as well. So Gianna, you want to take it away?
00:05:28
Speaker
So some big art news dropped after last week's episode on the Sacklers and Hulu's Dope Sick episode. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken the Sackler name off of its wings. So I found a BBC article that lays out a brief history of the museum's and the family's relationship, but why I wanted to share it is because we don't only get to hear the museum's statement, but we get the Sackler's responses to these events as well.
00:05:57
Speaker
In a joint statement released on Thursday, last Thursday, the Met and members of the Sackler family said that the action was quote, mutually agreed in order to allow the Met to further its core mission.
00:06:11
Speaker
Quote, our families have always strongly supported the Met, and we believe this is to be the best interest in the museum and the important mission that it serves. And this is from the descendants of Dr. Mortimer Sackler and Dr. Raymond Sackler. The earliest of these gifts were made almost 50 years ago, and now we are passing the torch to others who might wish to step forward to support the museum.
00:06:34
Speaker
The Met's president and CEO, Dan Wise, said in a statement that the Sacklers, quote, have been among our most generous supporters. This gracious gesture gesture of the Sacklers aids the museum in continuing to serve this and future generations.
00:06:51
Speaker
In 2019, and this is something that I did not know, the Met announced that it would no longer accept gifts from the family amid increased public scrutiny, and a total of seven exhibition spaces at the Met bears the Sackler name. So let's just talk about these statements. For me, it's the graciousness of it all that they are doing this of their own accord or of their own
00:07:21
Speaker
free will, I suppose, that this is something they're doing in order to pass the torch down to other rich, wealthy donors, give them an opportunity they've never had before. So clearly, we're dancing around the issue per usual.
00:07:38
Speaker
I understand that they have been generous. If we want to use that word, generous donors, I understand they have contributed a lot of money to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But I think the joint statement that they've put together is quite interesting. I suppose, especially here on APT, we are really over museum statements. And I think the only reason, again, why I wanted to share this one for today was because it's this joint statement with them and
00:08:07
Speaker
the Sacklers, and it just solidifies or proves the mutual beneficiary relationship that the two institutions have. I don't know. It's like a hard pill to swallow almost, that the museum, willingly or unwillingly, I don't know, is put in this position to even have to come out with a joint statement with this powerful family.
00:08:32
Speaker
Yeah, no pun intended there with the heartfelt swap. Oh, fuck. Yeah, this is just this gracious gesture by the Sacklers. It's like giving the Sacklers just another tiny little bit of
00:08:51
Speaker
kindness that I don't think that they necessarily deserve because it's saying the Sacklers are letting other people help arts and culture and that's still a good thing for them to do and it just it just doesn't make sense. Why address why you're taking down the Sackler name? I mean they don't do any of that in this statement and it's just like you're you're doing it
00:09:13
Speaker
I mean, hopefully for a good reason because your constituents are not happy with the situation and you're not addressing that at all. Like you're not addressing the mass population of people that actually benefit from the artworks and programs that are offered at the Met. You are still going back to this idea in support of big name donors. And the funny thing to me is like, I don't know what like
00:09:43
Speaker
sick kind of twisted relationship these two institutions have because if the Mets stopped taking donations or gifts from the Sackler family in 2019 in recent years, then what do they have to lose by addressing the situation because you have already decided that you're not taking anything from them anymore. So what do you have to lose to address what needs to be addressed?
00:10:06
Speaker
Right. And I also kind of feel like it's still, with this statement, there's still a lingering connection of kind of like hope for other connections that the Sacklers might provide. So they're not severing ties completely with the Sackler family. And I think that is very intentional because there are other ties and connections that the Sacklers still might bring to the Met.
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah, and it's it's coming from wealthy people who are probably doing something of the exact same caliber You know what I mean? It's just and I think what pisses me off most about this and this is a statement off of Payne's Insta Sharing the breaking news. They said nearly four years after our first action at the Met on March 10th 2018 the Sackler name is coming off of the Met and I
00:10:57
Speaker
This statement just enrages me because I want pain to have their moment, you know what I mean? And as much as they do, and obviously all of their amazing actions and efforts have built up to this, the Sacklers have just been notorious for, oh, I wouldn't have seen anything we could have done differently. And they've really never taken responsibility for what they've done. And this is just a continuation of that.
00:11:27
Speaker
Right. Exactly. Well, I like to think that we're little fire starters here at EPT. I mean, that's so wild. It was literally a few days after that episode came out that all of a sudden this news broke. I was like, are you kidding me? Don't get a swell head, Bianca. I mean, just saying.
00:11:48
Speaker
It was good timing, and I think, and Bianca and I really appreciate all of the responses that we've gotten from last week's episode, and Bianca will take us through a little bit of more signage conversations today as you guys also really resonated with that as well. I think if anything, the art pop tarts have gotten something really good out of the past couple weeks.
00:12:11
Speaker
I hope so, I hope so.
Museum Visits and Reflections
00:12:13
Speaker
So yeah, I'll transition into a little recap of my weekend, just because I do want to just continue along some of the conversations that Gianna and I were having on last week's episode. And also Gianna, you know what, as I was museum hopping this weekend, I know that Omicron is slowly threatening.
00:12:37
Speaker
Why don't they have to pick Omicron? I mean, I'm almost happy about it because it sounds like the most menacing of symbols or of diseases. But I felt like this weekend, whenever I was going around, it was exactly what we kind of always wanted to do with APT is to be able to go around to all these different museums and exhibitions and then bring that into the podcast conversations. And I feel like just with COVID, it hasn't really hard to
00:13:07
Speaker
be able to do a lot of in-person kind of museum activities. And I got a really good chunk in this weekend that I just want to talk about. So I'll start off with this past Sunday, I did in fact visit the Harvard Art Museums, which we talked about last week, given that one of the three art museums at Harvard's campus
00:13:37
Speaker
is literally called the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. So I did go visit. And I felt like I was an undercover spy. Like I did feel really kind of cool. It was an incredible museum. Like while I was in there, I just... That sucks. I really wish it was shitty. It really was...
00:13:59
Speaker
Wild how amazing an academic institution this was and Gianna literally I was I the whole weekend I was with APD special guest Foster Debbie crap who if you haven't listened to yet
00:14:12
Speaker
joined us on the podcast because of his museum studies work, particularly in natural history and taxidermy. Yeah, and by the way, I did not appreciate the taxidermy snaps you were sending me. Oh, I know. I'll get into that to not appreciate that. Foster and I coming from art history and museum studies academic backgrounds, we were in the Harvard Art Museum just saying, this facility is literally so nice.
00:14:41
Speaker
I couldn't help but think about the Bartlett Center for the Arts. Everyone needs to know what that is. The Bartlett Center is OSU's art building, which is where Gianna and I primarily did all of our
00:14:59
Speaker
everything. Art and academic studies. So whenever you're in the Harvard Art Museum, the upper levels kind of show some of the academic and learning and research spaces that they have. And they have, what is it called? I forget what the actual name of it of the center is, but they basically have a really impressive pigment
00:15:23
Speaker
collection and so on display on the upper level you could see all of the different types of pigment research that they do and the labs were just beautiful and so pretty and nice and down. We were up there just being like okay great like this is what a Harvard education I guess is really worth but must be nice. So then we're walking through the museum and Gianna one whole
00:15:53
Speaker
level basically is their academic teaching gallery. And it's not even a gallery, it's like a whole level of the museum. And it's that there's like labels up that say this is for teaching purposes, and this is where faculty and students and things like that can have things pulled from their permanent collection to be on view for class purposes. And
00:16:21
Speaker
like the works that are on view for class purposes. I was like, okay, like, wow, that's I'm so happy for you all of you students here studying all of this amazing stuff for for your class. That's
00:16:37
Speaker
That's great. I've got that big vein in your forehead. It's off the charts right now. It was too nice. It was too nice. The rest of the museum is incredible. It is really interesting because as we talked about,
00:16:53
Speaker
There are three art museums at Harvard, but they're all in one building. So as you're walking through the levels, you kind of weave in and out from museum to museum. And each museum does have a different type of collection. So that was, it was just interesting to see all of them kind of in one place.
00:17:14
Speaker
But as Foster and I were talking about, it's interesting how tied that must be and that is to donors and having to have Arthur M. Sackler Museum, the, you know, the Fogg Museum. So that was just really interesting and thinking about donations and how
00:17:32
Speaker
donations work at museums and how they have to kind of permanently exist. So the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, like we talked about last week, is primarily Asian art that's on display. And it was, I mean, it was, it was beautiful, like there's no way of kind of arguing against that. But you just, I mean, I did feel icky kind of going in there thinking about where the
00:17:56
Speaker
works were from, who they were from, how they were donated. And on the labels, obviously not everything, not every single work of art on display was donated by Arthur M. Sackler because they have the provenance on the labels saying that this is a gift of whoever and
00:18:17
Speaker
whatever so-and-so. So not everything is entirely donated from Arthur Sackler, but something that I did want to talk about as a positive from the Harvard Art Museum, something that I really enjoyed, was all of their labels on the wall next to every piece of art, they're pretty thorough. I mean, obviously they have an amazing
00:18:42
Speaker
team of people and grad students and probably undergrads doing constant research. So all of their labels are pretty great. But what they did have, and you can look at images on our Instagram for reference, are these little orange frames that would be placed outside of some of the labels or be placed around some of the labels on the wall. So as you're walking throughout the museums,
00:19:10
Speaker
these labels really pop because they have this like bright neon orange frame around them. And in little letters on the orange frame you see the word reframe. And so the labels that have this orange frame are kind of recontextualizing the artworks and bringing just new perspectives onto the work that the label is associated with.
00:19:34
Speaker
or the didactic like I have one here that's talking about female artists or simply artists and what do we call women artists whenever they're working do we call them women artists or are we just at the point where we can use the word artist and not have to kind of delineate a gender associated with it.
00:19:52
Speaker
So that was just something really cool that I appreciated throughout the museum. I think it is a really big step to kind of reframe the collection and see those new insights that many communities are asking for when it comes to artworks. I will say that I felt like they were pretty tame and it does seem like it kind of comes back on the viewer to make that decision.
00:20:20
Speaker
For the example, I'll use the female artist or simply artist label. It doesn't necessarily give you the most definitive answer, I suppose. So it's like some of them are a little bit ambiguous, but I do appreciate it. And so I think from my perspective, I would like to see some labels that are a little bit more intensive, but it's still a nice step that I appreciated.
00:20:47
Speaker
And I'll get more into labels here in a second, but I also just wanted to briefly mention that we did go to the Harvard Natural History Museum as well. And Gianna, I truly don't think that you would have been able to handle it because as I was walking through the taxidermy section, I was like definitely getting the heebie TVs. Like me, I had goosebumps. Like I felt
00:21:11
Speaker
so weird walking through it. I mean it was really interesting and going through it with Foster was actually very cool because he was kind of talking about what we talked about in the podcast, like how he can tell some of the figures are taxidermied or not. Some of them are obviously replicas or things like that. How they replicate the skin and how the kind of art making practice comes into making the molds for the bodies. And so that was really fun and he talked about the
00:21:42
Speaker
cases that they were in and how the Natural History Museum some of their displays are still really dated and how that kind of evokes this origin aesthetic of the Natural History Museum and not like not in a problematic way like some of their paleontology displays were just super retro looking but they looked
00:22:04
Speaker
kind of cool and there was nothing necessarily wrong with how they were displaying the bones of these prehistoric dinosaurs or mammals or things like that, but just the text or the bright kind of pastel colors against the wall was really interesting. So that was really fun to go through the Natural History Museum with Foster.
00:22:27
Speaker
they are taxidermists. I forgot what the word is. People who do taxidermy popping up on my TikTok and my Instagram now. It's really interesting because this girl was doing her commentary off this video of this girl who's stuffing a deer and she was saying, not me thinking that they just stuff them of the same thing they do like a Build-A-Bear. She's actually
00:22:53
Speaker
carving and creating the muscular features on her armature, which is really interesting. And it reminded me so much of my art professor who makes armatures and does mold because she creates animal figures. So if she wanted to put fur over them, even if it's faux fur, she's got taxidermy skills.
00:23:15
Speaker
Right. And that's something that Foster was pointing out about the Harvard Natural History Museum because he was pointing out some of the molds kind of predate the artistry that comes into play when doing taxidermy. And he was talking about how they're kind of like lacking muscle features or they're lacking kind of certain skeletal features. And it's mostly just kind of like
00:23:37
Speaker
a random animal shape that is underneath the skin and then you get this kind of like, what's the word I'm like, a very plain and toned down version of taxidermy. Yeah. It's like when we look at, I don't know, really old, even prehistoric drawings of like, is this a cow? We're trying to capture what this animal is even withdrawing. Right. Yeah. Right. Taxidermy. No escaping.
00:24:07
Speaker
All right, so the last thing that I'm going to recap for you all before we get into a little Santa lure is about the Isabella Stewart Gardner exhibition, Titian, Women, Myth and Power.
Titian Exhibition and Renaissance Art
00:24:24
Speaker
And this is something that's kind of been buzzing around people that I've been talking to in Boston. And I'm really glad that I went to go see the show. It's a show that definitely didn't disappoint after kind of hearing all this like buzz and hype
00:24:36
Speaker
about it. So I'm going to read the kind of initial didactic overview to give you a little background on the show from the Stuttgart Art Museum. Between 1551 and 1562 Titian created a series of monumental paintings for King Philip II of Spain. Celebrated as landmarks of Western painting, the six posi or painted poetries
00:25:03
Speaker
and vision epic stories from classical antiquity. Titian reimagined these familiar tales and used his modern style of painting to shape the future of Western art. For the first time in over four centuries,
00:25:16
Speaker
The Isabella Stewart Gardner's fully restored Rape of Europa is reunited with its five illustrious companions in the exhibition's finale and its only American venue on an international tour, including to the National Gallery in London and the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
00:25:34
Speaker
This exhibition explores each painting's story, its drama, raw emotion, and complex consequences illustrated in each painting, reconsidering what the posse meant in their own time and how they resonate now.
00:25:47
Speaker
Newly commissioned responses by contemporary artists and scholars engage with questions of gender, power, sexual violence, as relevant today as they were in the Renaissance. Two new works developed in response to Titian's painting are on view in both the Fenway Gallery and on the Museum's facade, inside the kind of castle portion of the Stuart Gardner Museum, artists in residence Mary Reed Kelly and Patrick Kelly,
00:26:13
Speaker
give voice to the central figure of Gardner's Titian painting, Europa. Then on the facade, Barbara Cooger's body language uses a detail from Titian's Diana and Actaeon to challenge dynamics of gender and power. So the show is really impressive just bringing obviously all of these works together for the first time in 400 years and the rape of Europa is
00:26:40
Speaker
part of the Stewart Gardner's permanent collection so it's pretty amazing that they're working with other museums to get these pieces around the globe and then on top of that having these kind of not only contemporary conversations exist within the labels
00:26:56
Speaker
themselves and the kind of didactics and curatorial response to the show, then having contemporary artists Mary Lee Kelly, Patrick Kelly, and Barbara Kruger also add that artistic recontextualizing as well throughout the museum was also really interesting. I want to go ahead and read a didactic on violence and power
00:27:21
Speaker
Throughout the exhibition there are kind of these little, you know, didactic and curatorial stations that give you time to rethink these kind of common themes found throughout the show and throughout art history, so we have violence and power that I'll read, then we have a didactic on the post-C, and we also have one on the gaze, so I'll read this one because I thought it was kind of the most compelling in relation to what we had talked about last week.
00:27:46
Speaker
Renaissance artists never shied away from violent subjects and Titian was no exception. His images of violence against women resonated differently in the 16th century than they do today. To consider these paintings is not to condone their violence, but to try to understand what they mean to us now and how we ourselves confront the persistent issue of sexual assault. Titian dramatizes several stories of rape and coercion.
00:28:14
Speaker
The artist does not dwell on the physical assault, but, like Ovid in Metamorphoses, instead emphasizes their consequences, however disturbing that might seem today. Europa, abducted and raped by Jupiter, king of the gods, bore children on the island of Crete, who founded a civilization in her name. Jupiter seduced Dene and Callisto, both of whom were punished, the former imprisoned by her family and the latter exposed by her peers.
00:28:43
Speaker
This approach underscores two aspects of sexual violence as it was understood in Titian's time. The use of rape as a tool of warfare and conquest and the legal standing of women in the Renaissance's society. In this period, women's rights barely existed. Victims were rarely the primary focus of the legal system and justice was framed in terms of family honor.
00:29:07
Speaker
Rape was a crime of lust, carrying penalties for the loss of the woman's family or honor or theft of property, since a married woman legally belonged to her husband. Often judicial rulings required the victim to enter into a forced marriage with her assailant. It seems peculiar to us now that Titian painted these images for King Philip II to decorate his home.
00:29:31
Speaker
but rape was a subject of both eroticism and power that resonated with the ascendant monarch. For contemporary audiences, the images raised disturbing questions. How do we reconcile the beauty of a painting with the horror of its subject? Have representations like these normalized scenes of violence throughout the history of Western art? Yes. Europa functions as a mute symbol, but what about her humanity? What is the relation between sexual violence or abduction and power?
00:30:00
Speaker
Between violence and grief, we hope this exhibition and the responses to it by Barbara Kruger and Mary Reed Kelly and Patrick Kelly will be catalysts for ongoing dialogue. So that didactic in itself just I thought was done really well. And then throughout the exhibition on each label associated with the artworks, there are obviously kind of curatorial labels talking about what's happening in the work of art.
00:30:30
Speaker
But then below that, there's another label that says, reconsidering Titian today. And they have quotes from just different people looking at the works. So for example, on Perseus and Andromeda, reconsidering Titian today, the quote says, if I may, I'd like to ask about what got us here, about how I, a daughter of Ethiopia, comes to be rescued by a semblance of a man of Greece.
00:30:58
Speaker
And so there are just really interesting little other nuggets and conversations about what this artwork is doing for us today. And not all of them were really all that powerful. Some of them were just kind of people giving their thoughts on the work itself and
00:31:14
Speaker
not necessarily that that's a bad thing, but I think that again, going back to what I was talking about with the Harvard Art Museums, my biggest critique of the exhibition overall would be that the kind of recontextualizing isn't that strong
00:31:29
Speaker
from the museum itself because if I were offering kind of my thoughts on something like sexual violence or what's happening in the artwork my verbiage would be a little bit stronger but I thought that those kind of like corresponding quotes from people
00:31:44
Speaker
were just a little bit tame, and I think that that was probably done intentionally. But overall, again, I really appreciated where the show is taking us in terms of kind of museum studies and how artworks are being recontextualized in a positive light. But however, this exhibition did not offer a trigger warning, which I appreciated given the fact that there are no other trigger warnings in the museum itself. And again, Rape of Europa
00:32:14
Speaker
is a part of the museum's permanent collection. So normally it is on view in kind of one of the great rooms in the Store Gardener Castle area. It was a very serious subject right off the bat there talking about sexual assault and violence against women in this opening didactic
00:32:32
Speaker
So I thought it was just an interesting thing that we had just been talking about Rape of Europa as kind of an example of Western art history that is violent against women but is seen as kind of a classic painting.
00:32:47
Speaker
to be praised in terms of its artistry and then here I was looking at one of those exact interpretations and didn't necessarily see a trigger warning but the show opens I thought in a very nice way kind of letting you know what exactly is going to happen whenever you walk into the room.
00:33:07
Speaker
You know what I love about that or that I think is interesting is that you're saying there's no trigger warnings, but because we do have this amazing didactic and we do have that information, like that's very strategic. Why would you need a trigger warning when you have been given all that information instead of blatantly giving you a sign without no context? So there's like a really kind of key crucial intentional thing happening.
00:33:36
Speaker
on things that we were calling for in the last episode. I'm kind of curious, and I'm sorry if you said this, but the recontextualization of these artworks by these three people, was this something that they did specifically for this museum, or was it something that they just did and that the museum is showing? Were the artists specifically brought in through this museum to recontextualize these artworks?
00:34:01
Speaker
You know, it's my understanding that they were. The Barbara Kruger work is on the facade of the Stuart Gardner Museum. And it's kind of interesting because normally you might come across a kind of banner like this that is giving you more context about the exhibitions that are on view. Like I think most art museums kind of have these massive banners outside letting you know what shows are on view.
00:34:26
Speaker
but this kind of took the place of that on the outside of the building. And to me, it seemed like they were using the Barbara Kruger as its own little exhibition on the outside of the building, even though it was just one piece. So I am not entirely sure if the Kruger and Mary Kelly works are traveling with the rest of the show. They made it seem like it was intentional to Isabella Stewart Gardner, but that's just what I
00:34:56
Speaker
saw, I suppose. If that is the case, I also think that is extremely important. Yeah, artists recontextualizing and reimagining artworks, we know is not a new thing we see that time and time again. But for a museum to
00:35:10
Speaker
give its platform and lend its voice to a specific artist. I can't say that we've talked about that before. I'm not saying that that's never happened, but I can say that I've never experienced a formal setting where I've been able to see that. I think that is really important if that is the case.
00:35:35
Speaker
talking about that mutual relationship between the institution and in the artist because also it's weird because the museum is lending its platform to the artist, but the artist is lending its voice to the institution therefore kind of speaking for it. However, I don't know if that is also like a clever
00:35:54
Speaker
Not that this Bellstroke Gallery isn't backing this exhibition, but so often, and especially on the podcast, we've talked about this call for museums to recontextualize exhibitions.
00:36:07
Speaker
that weren't well researched or well exhibited in the first place. So I'm curious how long this project was in the making or if having an artist come in to have like a third party kind of perspective or third party entity come in is also beneficial for the institution. I don't know. That's interesting to talk about.
00:36:29
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, I think it I think it was very intentional, but in a positive way. And like I said, the rape of Europa, the main piece of the exhibition is in that permanent collection of the Stuart Gardner Museum. And again, that is both of the contemporary artists use the exhibition and Mary Kelly's piece is distinctly focusing on the character of Europa.
00:36:52
Speaker
So her piece was kind of a nine minute video performance that was, I thought, fantastic. So yeah. I'm very glad that you had a great little museum excursion to a couple different places with some museum besties. We love to see that.
00:37:09
Speaker
No, it was great. So I just wanted to offer that recap since I thought it was very poignant and make sure that I talked to you guys about it before we go on our break. So Gianna, should we take a little break in the middle of this episode? And when we come back, we will be talking about Santa.
Historical Evaluation of Santa Claus
00:37:55
Speaker
Welcome back everybody. We are here with our last little segment of 2021 and Gianna is going to lead us through a little historical evaluation of the history of Santa Claus. So Gianna, can you take it away for us?
00:38:14
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. I would love to. Please don't mind the big shift in tone here from Santa to Sackler. However, we did want to bring a little bit of joy before you.
00:38:30
Speaker
you know, don't have us for two weeks, which I know you're just going to be so sad about. I say sarcastically, but I really hope you do. So most of our modern Santa or Santa forms that we see, what have you, is shaped by some familiar influential figures and artists such as Clement Moore, who wrote a visit from St. Nicholas, otherwise known as the night before Christmas in 1822.
00:38:57
Speaker
the artist Thomas Nest, who in 1881 drew the iconic imagining of Santa Claus as Jolly, dressed in red with a full beard, really as we know him today. Because it seems these days it's literally impossible for us to go through one episode without talking about commercialization, we will get into a little bit of the Norman Rockwell and Coca-Cola of it all,
00:39:20
Speaker
when in the 1930s and 40s this advertising was key and popularizing this specific version of Santa Claus. But let's start a little further back because Clement Moore didn't invent Santa Claus by any means.
00:39:35
Speaker
The name Santa Claus comes from the informal Dutch name Saint Nicholas, which is Sinterklaas. Saint Nicholas was a historic fourth century Greek saint from an area known in modern terms as Turkey, who had a reputation for secret gift giving or putting coins in the left shoe of particularly like children. Giving gifts to children was like his whole thing.
00:40:02
Speaker
Being the patron saint of children, St. Nicholas has long been associated with, again, gift giving to kids. We are looking at two images right now, both Bianca and I, of Russian historic examples of St. Nicholas, one in the 1300s, and it shows St. Nicholas as very divine looking. The perspective is very flattened and he's enveloped in gold.
00:40:29
Speaker
The other is a little bit further up in the 1800s that is still very flattened in perspective, flattened in nature. We do have a golden halo around him, but there is a larger narrative in this piece that almost reminds me of like a quilt, how we would see narratives happen in certain kind of square sections on a big quilt.
00:40:53
Speaker
in this like frame around the figure are different scenes of Saint Nicholas giving gifts as he is the patron saint of again, children. I think also in terms of religious iconography the image of Saint Nicholas from the 13th century clearly encapsulates that. We also have him holding like a manuscript, we have crosses, we have the halo, and we do in the other one as well.
00:41:16
Speaker
And in terms of the 18th century piece with the narratives, it reminds me of like the lamentation of Christ. So we still have this like direct contextualization of a saint, right, being involved with religion. So we haven't like moved to the center class of it all.
00:41:34
Speaker
In the 1700s, kind of smack in the middle between those two pieces we just talked about, we get the phenomenon of Father Christmas. Although the earliest English example of the personification of Christmas are thought to be from the 15th century carol, which refers to quote, sire Christmas. He typically represents the spirit of good cheer at Christmas, but was not associated with either children or bringing of gifts like center class was.
00:42:04
Speaker
However, we do have documentation of Father Christmas in Josiah King's 1686, The Examination and Trial of Father Christmas. This was published shortly after Christmas was reinstated as a holy day in England after being banned post-Civil War England.
00:42:24
Speaker
In this image as well, we also do get some text that kind of describes this narrative. We have the image of Father Christmas sitting in this chair and we have not a flattened perspective anymore. We have more depth. One of the reasons why I like this image too is because we do have some text paired with the visuals. We have Father Christmas sitting in his chair. The perspective is not flattened anymore. There's actually depth and there is
00:42:50
Speaker
larger kind of narrative happening again with text and this is a kind of a good transition into more published works that we'll be looking at too. Also this piece is interesting just in terms of kind of more modern lore of Santa Claus as well because the examination and trial of Father Christmas reminds me of Miracle on 34th Street and it also reminds me of the Santa Claus movie where they bring in Tim Allen and he's like you know being
00:43:21
Speaker
brought in by the police and that sort of thing. So it's kind of interesting just how this how these tales have been retold over time and how that came into popular culture as well. He also has in this etching more of the traditional Santa Claus look we kind of have this it's in black and white but we have this what seems to be fur lining his garments and fur lining his hat that he's wearing as well.
00:43:48
Speaker
When you do think about the white fur or the lining on Santa Claus's, as we know of Santa Claus and his attire, it's really not far-fetched from regal attire, which we've talked about. Right, or people attire as well, yeah. Especially when you think of a crown. When we talked about British royal iconography,
00:44:12
Speaker
and we talked about the crown. It has this specific white fur lining, but the animal that they use, which I cannot remember right now, has black dots on it. And you can see in this etching that the white trim on his hat has little dots on it. You can, yeah, totally.
00:44:32
Speaker
This brings us to Clement Moore, who wrote, again, the visit from St. Nicholas, otherwise known as the Night Before Christmas, in the early 1800s. And we get this, like, vivid literary description of Santa, which I will read for you, because what's a Christmas episode without a little storytelling? So it's just a little chunk from Twas the Night Before Christmas.
00:44:58
Speaker
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed in all fur from his head to his foot and his clothes were all tarnished with ash and soot. A bundle of toys he had flung on his back and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes how they twinkled, his dimples how merry. His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow and his beard on his chin was as white as the snow.
00:45:27
Speaker
So cute. This also was a good moment for pairing Santa Claus and our version of Santa because Santa Claus also was imagined to carry a staff. He also rode on the rooftops and he rode on a huge white horse and he had very like mischievous little helpers who listened at chimneys to find out whether children were also being good or bad.
00:45:54
Speaker
In terms of his description, like Santa's physical descriptions, there's also some interesting research about the parallels of Norse mythology with the god Odin, who rode on an eight-legged horse and who was old and had a white beard.
00:46:11
Speaker
Moving forward, we get to Thomas Nast, who was a German-born American caricaturist and first drew Santa Claus for the 1862 Christmas season Harper's Weekly Cover and Center for Illustration to memorialize the family sacrifices of the Union during the early and for the north darkest days of the Civil War. Nast's Santa appeared as a kindly figure representing Christmas, the holiday celebrating the birth of Christ,
00:46:41
Speaker
But I want to talk about an image that Nas drew just of Santa shortly after his edition for Harper's Weekly cover. So this image was done in 1881. It's his most famous rendition of Santa and it's called Merry Old Santa Claus. When Nas created this image of Santa Claus he was drawing on his
00:47:03
Speaker
native German tradition of St. Nicholas. In the German Christian tradition, December 6 was and still is St. Nicholas Day, a festival day of honoring St. Nicholas and a day of also gift-giving. Nass combined the tradition of St. Nicholas with other German folk traditions of elves to draw his Santa
00:47:23
Speaker
in 1862. I think with Nass's background and being characterized as a caricaturist I think is important here because after this I'm going to be talking about Norman Walkwell, other artists that bring Santa into realism. But this artist is definitely still an illustrator. Most of the artists in terms of Santa I would identify as an illustrator.
00:47:50
Speaker
Because even with like the propaganda depicting Santa and the Christmas season associating with war, like all of that is getting us closer and closer to the popularization of Santa, the commercialization and also the propaganda. We do start to get some very distinctive Santa cloth features here. He's smoking a pipe. He has like mistletoe on his hat. But it's definitely kind of like an old school like cross hatched
00:48:19
Speaker
etching, right? And a funny thing about this image too is this image of Santa Claus actually became colorized and reimagined later on in the 1880s and with Santa in a red suit. So then shortly after, once we get more color versions, we do have this characterization of Santa in red.
00:48:39
Speaker
Interestingly enough, though, between these two time periods of Clement Moore and Nass' version, when Clement Moore's book was reproduced and published, different variations and illustrations came out with that, and sometimes Santa would be published wearing yellow or even green. So it wasn't until the colorization of Nass Santa that we got Santa in red.
00:49:01
Speaker
In the beginning of the 1900s, that's when we get more Christmas books, more narratives, more holiday commercialism in the form of festive illustrations. I should also say particularly around this time too, we start seeing Santa kind of depicted more cross-culturally too. Santa is still drawn and takes shape as more of a cartoon character still. He's not quite entered realism yet.
00:49:27
Speaker
But when the illustrator Norman Rockwell comes about and depicts Santa many times over in the 1920s, he's not only helping to solidify the familiar aesthetics of Santa, but we get Santa as less of like a cartoon and starting to accept him as like a real influential figure.
00:49:50
Speaker
So Bianca, I don't know if you have seen these images of Santa by Norman Rockwell before. They're very characteristic of his work. If you see them, you would probably say, oh yes, that's Norman Rockwell. They're in this lovely circle framed. We have two that we're looking at. One is from 1920 and one is from two years after. The first one, it kind of reminds me a little bit of
00:50:13
Speaker
thomas nass because we have that little like mistletoe we have these manuscripts kind of this like cult nostalgia or like german tradition in terms of text and aesthetic too because we have like christmas laid out in this like um like super decorative font
00:50:32
Speaker
And then the one in 1922, he's not like reading, he doesn't have this manuscript, right? He's portrayed as a toy maker and he has these little elves around him. So from the Norman Rockwell Museum, they have a page in their archive attributed to Santa illustrations, which is super cute. Not just from Rockwell himself, but they also have an illustrator, Haddon Sumblom, who in the 1930s, about 10 years after Rockwell's first rendition,
00:50:59
Speaker
iconically painted Santa for Coca-Cola's winter advertisement. Sunblum took his inspiration from Clement Moore's poem towards the night before Christmas and decided to make Santa as cheerful as possible, wearing a festive red and white suit, smiling happily with rosy cheeks, and as luck would have it Sunblum had a neighbor who retired
00:51:23
Speaker
who was a retired salesman and he actually was the model for this piece. So the model for the Coca-Cola Santa was this real guy and he happened to be the illustrator's neighbor. Sun Blonde continued his Coca-Cola Santa ads for the next 35 years which further popularized this version of Santa as the image that we most associate with Christmas today.
00:51:45
Speaker
um so i think this image is really funny we've got santa like really relaxed in like a big old kind of retro chair um and he's holding our classic glass coca-cola bottle and then he has this like cute little deer um we do have the coca-cola logo but this piece is called and the title is on there as it is an advertisement quote the pause that refreshes and i think the biggest thing that's kind of characterized here is we have the belt
00:52:15
Speaker
and we have these like writer's boots too and in this image he's actually not wearing his Santa Claus hat but he has this like perfect kind of like handlebar mustache too which i think gives him like the i don't know it modernizes Santa
00:52:31
Speaker
This one in particular, let's see. This one is from 1956. So yeah, this chair that Santa's in is from something out of Mad Men, you know. It's so cute. I love this ad so much. And there's a little reindeer with Santa. I just
00:52:48
Speaker
something about coca-cola christmas advertisements like i just they they know exactly what they're doing over at coca-cola and frankly i'm not mad about it their ads are always so cute and i was telling juliana that the
00:53:04
Speaker
Christmas Coca-Cola commercial that came out like 10 years ago or something with the train shake it up song where Santa has like the snow globe and he's moving the snow globe and bringing people to bed. That ad lives rent free in my fucking life around the holidays.
00:53:20
Speaker
Love that commercial so much and Santa's just like bringing people together and then at the end it's like doo-doo-doo-doo-doo Yeah, the little coca-cola train Christmas. It's just it's so cute and this Santa right here just looks happy. Wake up. Wake up. It's so cute and this Santa he just looks jolly as can be and I'm here for it. Santa looks jolly as fuck.
00:53:49
Speaker
He's just so happy and job well done and he's relaxing with a Coca-Cola. And you know what? It reads perfectly well to me. Yes, yeah. I love the newer ones with the polar bears. I think those are very cute. I think, you know, when it comes... Except Coca-Cola is really gonna have to figure that out given their contributions to climate change.
00:54:13
Speaker
I mean, that's not a great look for Coca-Cola. Yeah, that's rough. Merry Christmas.
00:54:20
Speaker
We are melting the ice caps. Yeah, so that is my little history on Santa. I hope it wasn't too rushed. You wanted to dedicate a lot of time about last week's episode and following up with you guys about that. But we hope this puts you in a little bit of a festive mood. As we kind of talked about for our parade episode, I am like a staunch believer in giving Thanksgiving justice. So right after that, I put my little
00:54:50
Speaker
plannedy bush Christmas tree up and I've got my basically if you've been and I have all of our Christmas shopping done too so I wrapped all my presents they're under my tree they look super cute and I am definitely in the mood but before we get into some other things Bianca I want to ask you do you have like a favorite Santa
00:55:12
Speaker
like in the movies, like who's your favorite Santa? Tim Allen. Tim Allen as a Santa Claus. Is your Tim Allen? Yeah, I love, I think Tim Allen is a
00:55:22
Speaker
Fantastic Santa. I love Santa to be, you know, like a little funny, a little witty, a little sassy. A little sassy. Yeah. And there's something more than I love than Santa Claus being played by a former cocaine dealer. Oh my god, I know. And the Republican, that's fine. I still like Tim Allen. I know, I know. I think he's a fantastic Santa Claus. I am very excited to watch that movie.
00:55:49
Speaker
Okay, I had to look him up because I don't know his name, but Edmund Gwen
00:55:56
Speaker
Gwen, yes, who plays Santa on Miracle on 34th Street. Aww. I think he's so cute. And I just like the way that he acts with Natalie Wood. I love him. And I love it. So sweet. He's introduced in the movie because the Santa from Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is sloshed. And he's like, shame on you, sir. That's so cute. I love that. That was actually the first one I watched.
00:56:25
Speaker
this christmas season oh nice miracle on 34th street i've been saving white christmas for you bitch have you watched it okay no i haven't watched it yet i haven't watched that i haven't watched santa claus or home alone oh yeah i watched home alone oh that's okay i'll watch it with andrew tonight actually because he's been wanting to watch home alone so that's good that to know that you already watched it yeah i watched home alone i gave in for that one but white christmas okay yeah i haven't watched it yet
00:56:50
Speaker
Well, thanks so much, Gianna. I'm feeling some joy after that.
Conclusion and Holiday Wishes
00:56:55
Speaker
Feeling the Christmas spirit. And Gianna, I will see you in the flesh in a few days. So look out on our Instagram because we'll be posting the two of us IRL.
00:57:07
Speaker
So our little tartlets, before we let you go for the holiday season, we need your help planning our comeback in 2022. That's pretty wild. Gianna and I are finally doing the Drunk Art History episode that you all have been asking for.
00:57:24
Speaker
We will keep you posted on the details, how that episode will be released, the format, but you will have it on January 4th. So in the meantime, to make that happen, we need questions from you all. These questions can be anything about art history, about pop culture, they can be personal, whatever. We just want to hear from you guys. You can send an email with your question to artpoptalk at gmail.com.
00:57:46
Speaker
or you can also send in a voice recording to our email address as well with your question and we will play it back for you on the episode.
00:57:55
Speaker
So with that everyone, we hope that you have an amazing holiday, a very happy new year. We love you all so much and we are so excited to kick off 2022 with you all in January. Gianna, anything else to add? Nothing much other than I hope everybody has a great holiday, hope everyone has a little break from work and everyone please, please, please stay safe. Don't let the transformer that is Omicron get you.
00:58:23
Speaker
Merry Christmas. Everyone, we will talk to you on January 4th. Happy holidays, everyone. Bye. Bye. Art Pop Talk's executive producers are me, Bianca Martucci-Vinc. And me, Gianna Martucci-Vinc. Music and sounds are by Josh Turner and photography is by Adrian Turner. And our graphic designer is Sid Hammond.
00:59:07
Speaker
you