David and Art

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In this episode of David and Art, host David Smith continues his journey through the melodies and musings of Bill Evans—a pianist whose quiet fire captivated Miles Davis and helped shape the course of jazz history. Discover how his touch transformed every note into a masterpiece, leaving a profound impact on the world of music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week's edition of David and Art, host David Smith dives into the story of Bill Evans, a jazz pianist whose artistry left an indelible mark on the genre. His name might not ring a bell for everyone, but his impact is undeniable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Further exploring the Newport Jazz Festival and it's legacy, here's David Smith with this week's edition of David and Art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How does an artists trajectory affect our understanding and appreciation of their creative output? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“What's in a name? That which we call a masterpiece by any other artist would be just as evocative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week's edition of David & Art, host David Smith explores the intriguing intersection of history and the arts. He reflects on how modern culture's obsession with the "new" often leads to a dismissive attitude toward history, and how this affects both how we experience art and our collective memory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Continuing to examine the tole of historical accuracy within artistic pursuits, here's David Smith with this weeks edition of David and Art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When it comes to Art, just how important is historical accuracy? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Should historical art really reflect history accurately? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With so much cultural variety, when is art "art?" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Places that can be rooted in and by particular art, are fortunate places indeed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Can memorizing art, make it more affective? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A rare, and deeply fascinating example of creating, purely through subtraction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Exploring the importance and necessity of arts in education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Further examining the evocative work of Claude Debussy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

An airplane ride opened his eyes, well, ears - to an amazing string quartet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Even centuries after its creation, a classic work of art can be seen afresh through the work of another artist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When thinking of the creative process, we don't usually think about being alone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sometimes it’s good to be reminded that just by picking up a book we can join a long tradition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sometimes seemingly mundane things, like watching a frazzled waiter, can remind you of great art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The story of one of the world’s most famous paintings is a story worth repeating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Showcasing American artist Norman Rockwell's journey from the covers of the Saturday Evening Post to Look magazine.Norman Rockwell became extremely famous in the United States as a key illustrator for a magazine called the Saturday Evening Post. He thought of himself as a storyteller. His paintings were not just pictures. He wanted them to show settings that were very human. And sometimes, settings that involved deeper and more complicated emotions that defied being put into words.By the early 1960s however the Post had changed its focus. More and more, its cover illustrations were portraits of celebrities. Rockwell didn’t want to do that. After his paintings had graced a whopping 323 covers of the magazine, he stepped away from it for good. Rockwell’s final cover illustration on an issue of the Saturday Evening Post appeared at the end of May 1963.He wanted a different outlet for his work, done the way he wanted to do it, and he found it in a magazine called Look. When President Lyndon Johnson took up the cause of civil rights after President Kennedy was assassinated, Rockwell picked up the cause as well. After he left the Post, writes his biographer, “Rockwell began treating his work as a vehicle for progressive causes.”His first illustration in Look magazine appeared in the January 14, 1964, issue. It portrayed an event that had happened over three years earlier in New Orleans. It showed federal marshals escorting a little girl named Ruby Bridges to an otherwise all white elementary school, protecting her from a mob that wanted to block school integration. He titled the painting “The Problem We All Live With.” It’s a moving work that portrays segregation and prejudice, a far cry from the sentimental scenes of Americana that first brought him fame.Years ago, Stephen Heyde, the former Conductor and Music Director of the Waco Symphony Orchestra, told me that “art has the power to be the conscience of a society.” And this is what Rockwell sought to create. By the 60s, the emotions he sought to convey in this art were ones rooted in society’s problems and injustices.If you can imagine how incensed people would be if Rockwell’s piece were removed from an exhibit so no one would be offended by it, you can begin to understand some of the more recent controversies. Art is stronger than mere words. Art can vividly distill complexities that we sometimes would prefer to skim over. Many artists believe their works are, in a way, supposed to offend people because that is what inevitably happens when injustice is illuminated by art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this week's episode of David and Art, host David Smith discusses how art can transcend simple expression to convey profound emotions and historical truths.Charlie Brown has it right. At one point in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” he and Peppermint Patty are sitting together under a tree talking. Suddenly she says “Explain love to me, Chuck.” After a thoughtful pause, he responds, “I can recommend a book or a painting or a song or a poem, but I can’t explain love.” Love is one of those things the key to whose understanding, and even clear articulation, lies outside our materialistic world. After all, that’s why there are love songs and love poems: workaday expression doesn’t cut it.Art can express all kinds of things that are complicated, not just love and happiness. And not only positive things, either. Some of the most complicated emotions inherent in a society that need expressing are not the warm and fuzzy kind.Back in 1946, Whittaker Chambers wrote about the relationship between the grief inherent in slavery and the single most distinctive art that grew out of it: the African American spiritual. “Grief,” he wrote, “like a tuning fork, gave the tone, and the Sorrow Songs were uttered.” Spirituals stand as powerful reminders, conveyed through powerful art, of a profound wrong. They have a distinctive two-fold claim on our attention: they’re works of art; and they are connections to history.This distinctive powerful role that art can play is closely related to the passionate controversies that sometime spring up. It may seem puzzling when artists are so quick to cry censorship when their works are criticized. The tendency, however, speaks to this powerful role. When the artist believes he or she is bringing to society’s attention something that needs redress, he’s bound to feel more defensive about his individual work. When, in the face of criticism, artists reach for the First Amendment, it’s a clear sign that they’re trying to defend something more than just the paint on the canvas or the ink on a page.To be an artist is often to be called upon to bear witness to something that you think is important, something that you think needs to be known.Because so much of contemporary art is distractingly divergent in form and content, it might be easier to relate to a “conscience” artist if there were one whose style reflected more traditional artistic forms. There is. One of the most popular artists of the twentieth century, in fact, provides a good example. His name is Norman Rockwell. Let’s take a closer look at his work next time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A California artist named Ed Ruscha offered a distinctive vision to the 20th century art world.Of the crop of Los Angeles artists who rose to worldwide fame in the second half of the twentieth century, the best known is perhaps painter Ed Ruscha. His work is among the most distinctive you’ll see, and his signature style so strong that you can spot him easily from across the museum. Born in 1937 in Omaha Nebraska, Ruscha moved to Oklahoma City with his family when he was about 4. He showed signs of being a natural artist, and he moved to LA in 1956 and studied at what is today the California Institute for the Arts. After graduation he worked as a layout artist for an ad agency but was still dedicated to making art of his own. He soon became associated with the Ferus Gallery. He’s still painting and indeed is one of the last ones of that cohort still alive. Because he started work as an artist in LA, the famous Hollywood sign up in the hills and the Twentieth Century Fox movie studio logo are representative of the elements of contemporary life that he puts into his paintings. The open road and the ubiquitous gas station are recurring elements as well. A few years ago, after seeing an exhibit of his work at the Modern in Fort Worth I wrote that “You don’t have to wonder why Ruscha is painting a Standard [Oil] gas station or the Hollywood sign, any more than why Frederick Remington painted his stagecoaches. Like Remington, Ruscha specializes in western and California landscapes: wide-open vistas that are now punctuated, however, by gas stations and billboards instead of mesas and cowboys. As French impressionist painter Claude Monet had the Seine River, Ruscha once said, I’ve got Route 66 from Oklahoma to LA. Many of his landscapes including his series of gas stations, evoke the westward feel of the US at mid-century.Other of his work is more difficult because he often uses words and phrases as the objects for his paintings. We’re not accustomed to interacting with words themselves as images and so it’s difficult to see them as having any visual component at all. “Art has to be something that makes you scratch your head,” he said. In 2020 he did the cover art and the typography of Paul McCartney’s album entitled McCartney III and last year, created the cover art for the new Beatles single “Now and Then,” which is a Ruscha-type phrase for one of his paintings if ever there was one. Speaking of now, there’s currently an exhibit of his work up at the LACMA. If you’re in LA before October, don’t miss it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Influences on jazz didn’t come just from New York and New Orleans.Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve come to know an innovative gallery owner from the 1950s named Walter Hopps. Paintings and sculpture weren’t his only interests, however. Initially, he was interested in jazz which was itself a very cutting-edge art form in the early ’50s. In 1952 in LA, Hopps, a friend from Stanford named Jim Newman, and a painter named Craig Kaufmann created something called the Concert Hall Workshop, primarily to present jazz performances by new players. All the younger painters liked jazz, said Kauffman. We would make tons of trips to San Francisco and look at art and listen to music. There was a relationship between art and music that doesn’t exist anymore said Jim Newman with whom Hopps would also found Syndell Studio. To understand what’s called “West Coast” jazz you first need to know that from decade to decade, there was a succession of movements within jazz itself, each distinctive and each reacting largely against movements that were regnant before. This is one element that fixes jazz squarely in the tradition of artistic modernism. “West Coast” jazz (which is also sometimes called “cool jazz”) emerged as a reaction against a style called be-bop, which was marked by speedy playing, improvisation, intricate solos, and virtuosity. West Coast jazz was smoother, cooler, calmer, more melodic, less based on huge heroic solos. It also wasn’t based on blues chord progressions. “Largely dismissed at the time by critics in New York, the musicians, arrangers, composers, producers and labels associated with West Coast Jazz have profoundly influenced the music we listen to today,” critic Geoff Roach wrote in 2005. Two record labels founded in Los Angeles in 1951 and 1952 called Pacific Jazz and Contemporary were the leaders in recording west coast jazz players. Some of those players included a sax player named Stan Getz and a trumpet player named Chet Baker. Most famous perhaps was an alto player named Paul Desmond and pianist Dave Brubeck who in 1951 formed a quartet that played what may have been the pinnacle of West Coast jazz. One of the outlets that helped popularize West Coast jazz was a television show called Peter Gunn, that followed the adventures of a smooth detective and ran from 1958-1961. Peter Gunn, the detective at the center of the show, “likes Ivy League clothes, sophisticated women and cool modern jazz,” a write-up in Life Magazine in May 1959 explained to readers. “The jazz music played as background on the Gunn show has become famous in its own right. Put on an RCA-Victor record, it is now the top selling LP in the country. And sometimes some of the show’s fans ignore the TV picture and just listen to the music."Indeed, this kind of Cool jazz was purposefully the center of the show. And in 1959, the soundtrack album from the show won a Grammy for Album of the Year. It’s composer, who came to sort of embody West Coast jazz, was someone you may in fact know quite well—a musician named Henry Mancini. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The gifts that the muses bring to artists are rarely finished products.I’ve been doing this show for about 5 1/2 years now—since the summer of 2018—and people sometimes ask me “Where do you get your ideas?” Well, they come from many different directions: from reading, from talking to friends, from things I see, things I hear. And sometimes apparently, just out of the blue. But rarely do any of these ideas come as much more than just a little inkling. Even when I think that I’ve got ahold of something that will make a good show, once I get the idea down on paper, I realize that that’s only the very beginning of a process that I’m going to have to work through in order to expand it into something that’s complete.I wish that inspiration came in greater totality, in a more complete package, but it rarely does.This is what artists of all kinds, from writers to painters to composers, have to contend with and I think a lot of people misunderstand inspiration. Yes, inspiration is a huge part of art, but inspiration, when it comes, just brings along with it a drawn-out requirement of more exploration and hard work. Yes, there are those rare times in the life of an artist when an idea bursts upon the consciousness and carries through with a striking totality: those times in which inspiration strikes and then the artist inherits from it a work that is complete. But most of the time, inspiration—that element that the Greeks hailed as this mysterious gift from the muses—leaves nothing behind but a seed that is no closer to a finished product than an acorn is to an oak tree. The quotation that “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” is usually attributed to Thomas Edison, or sometimes to Albert Einstein: an inventor or a theoretical physicist. But it’s impossible to think that no artist ever put that feeling into words before.I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I think that I’m reading a novel by Emile Zola right now called The Masterpiece and that’s where all this has come from. It’s about an artist and his struggles to turn his impulses and talent into something substantive. He doesn’t meet with much success, and he ever vacillates between thinking of himself as talented or even a genius, and thinking of himself as a hack and failure.An artist has to fight with an inspiration to bring it to fruition. But you also have to work pretty hard to get a sense of what that fruition is even going to be. One of the difficulties an artist has is that you don’t know if what you want is going to work or not, or if the direction you go will be the right one. It’s a very frustrating thing to not have your work turn out the way you’re trying to make it turn out. It’s a feeling that every artist knows, but not many other people understand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.