The Art Assignment

Artist Henri Rousseau painted The Dream in 1910, and its imagery of a woman lounging on a sofa in the middle of a jungle was as surreal then as it is today. What is it about this artwork that captivated audiences then and now?

Artist Maurizio Cattelan duct taped a banana to a wall, titled it "Comedian", and sold 5 editions of the artwork for as much as $150,000 each. Why did it capture our attention, curiosity, and memes? What does it mean?

Many of us who make and appreciate art spend loads of time on Instagram. How is it changing the way we interpret and interact with art? And is it actually changing the art that gets made? Let's find out.

Corporate lobbies and board rooms are often graced with impressive art, but why? What's the rationale behind this expense, and what impact does it have on the rest of the art world? We look at the history of corporate collecting, starting with Chase Manhattan Bank in 1959, trace its meteoric rise since, and work through the reasoning behind it.

Host Sarah Urist Green shares 40 reflections about art, gathered in the course of a career in art, art history, curating, and making videos about all of the above.

Impressionism is one of the best known and loved movements in Art History, but why? We present a case for why Impressionism is interesting and worth your attention and admiration, beyond the famous names behind it of Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mary Cassatt, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissaro, Gustave Caillebotte, Paul Cézanne, et al.

Do you question your ability to talk about art in a coherent way? Here are tips for how to sound like you understand art, even if you've never taken a class or set foot in a museum.

This episode of Art Cooking explores the life, art, and eating habits of the great Impressionist artist Claude Monet. We prepare a menu based on the journals Monet kept during his years in Giverny, France, enjoying the freshest produce from the vegetable garden he kept along side the extensive flower and water gardens you recognize from his paintings.

Empathy is a term we hear a lot, but what does it mean and how does it work? Looking back through art history, we find many moments when art has allowed us to share in the feelings of others, from Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial, to representations of the Buddhist deity Jizō Bosatsu.

Dorothea Lange captured this iconic photo known as Migrant Mother in 1936. But who was the woman pictured? And how did she and her family feel about its existence in the world? Guest host John Green introduces you to Florence Owens Thompson, her family, and her story.

Throughout history, art has helped reveal the climate around us and highlight our fragile relationship to it. We look at navigational charts from the Marshall Islands, Katsushika Hokusai’s "Under the Wave off Kanagawa," to the cave paintings of Lascaux, and Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, among others.

There is plenty of art ABOUT space, but this video explores art ACTUALLY IN space. Learn about cosmonauts sketching orbital sunrises, the Moon Museum, Carl Sagan's Golden Record, and the sculptures currently orbiting Earth today, among other works of space art