Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History

In this Masterpiece Moment, we step into the storm-lit space of Frida Kahlo’s The Two Fridas (1939)—a double self-portrait painted in the emotional aftermath of her divorce from Diego Rivera. Two nearly identical Fridas sit hand-in-hand beneath a heavy sky, dressed in opposing identities: European white lace on one side, Tehuana tradition on the other. Their hearts are exposed. A single vein connects them. And one of them is bleeding. This episode is an intimate, lyrical close-look at how Kah...

Pop Art is everywhere—on soup cans, comic panels, billboards, and celebrity faces. But this episode isn’t asking, “Is it beautiful?” It’s asking, “Who sold this to you… and why did you buy it?” In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, host James William Moore dives into the movement that dragged advertising, packaging, and fame onto the gallery wall—and made it impossible to unsee the machinery underneath. From Andy Warhol’s silkscreen assembly line of Campbell’s Soup a...

A splash is the fastest thing in the world—blink-and-it’s-gone. So how did David Hockney turn a half-second event into an entire philosophy of looking? In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, James dives into Hockney’s lifelong obsession with vision: not “How accurate is it?” but “How does seeing feel?” We start with “A Bigger Splash” (1967)—that calm modern pool interrupted by a frozen white explosion—now in Tate Britain. From there, we jump to Hockney’s 1980...

In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History (presented by J-Squared Atelier), host James William Moore pulls back the curtain on the myth that art is “above politics.” Because history doesn’t back that up—when the world catches fire, artists don’t always whisper. Sometimes they make images so loud you can’t unsee them. In Behind the Brush: When Art Gets Political, we follow political art as witness, protest, and pressure—starting with Francisco Goya’s The Third of May 180...

A portrait that refuses to sit still. In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, host James William Moore opens the case file on Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait (1434)—a painting where the real plot twist isn’t the couple… it’s the mirror. A convex glass “eye” on the back wall reflects two unexpected figures in the doorway, pulling us into the room and turning a simple portrait into a staged moment, a legal-looking document, and a psychological trap. We examine the ...

In this episode, we drop straight into Surrealism—where logic takes a back seat and the subconscious grabs the wheel. If you’ve ever seen a lobster perched on a telephone and thought, “Yep… that tracks,” you already understand the vibe. Born in the 1920s after World War I, Surrealism wasn’t “random for random’s sake”—it was a rebellion against the idea that reason alone could explain (or prevent) catastrophe. Guided by André Breton’s manifesto and supercharged by Sigmund Freud’s dream theor...

In this Artist Snapshot episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History (presented by J-Squared Atelier), host James William Moore traces Jean-Michel Basquiat’s rise from the SAMO© tag on late-1970s Manhattan streets to the early-1980s gallery scene. The episode breaks down how Basquiat “samples” language and imagery—using words, cross-outs, repetition, crowns, skulls, and anatomy—to build paintings that feel like the city itself. You’ll hear key milestones, including his first New Y...

When the camera arrived in the 1800s, it didn’t just introduce a new gadget — it triggered a full-blown identity crisis for painters. In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, host James William Moore digs into the moment photography “kicks the door in,” forcing painting to choose: compete on realism… or reinvent itself. We’ll travel from the ghostly early daguerreotype to Realism’s unfiltered truth-telling, then into Impressionism’s radical pivot toward light, atmosph...

A “lost” Van Gogh wasn’t stolen. It wasn’t destroyed. It was simply dismissed—and then left to gather dust in an attic beside Christmas ornaments and broken lamps for more than a century. In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, host James William Moore unpacks the real-life mystery of Sunset at Montmajour: a painting Van Gogh described to Theo in 1888, then seemingly vanished from the record. We follow the trail from early 1900s misidentification (no signature, “styl...

Step into the buzzing streets of 19th-century Paris, where bright new boulevards and a rapidly modernizing world were transforming everything—except the art establishment. In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, host James William Moore unpacks the dazzling rebellion that erupted when a group of young painters refused to play by the Académie’s rigid rules . From Monet dragging his easel into the sunlight, to Renoir painting pure joy, to Berthe Morisot and Mary ...

In this fierce and empowering Artist Snapshot, Art Happens dives into the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, the Baroque painter who shattered expectations and refused to be silenced. From a brutal trial that tried to break her to the creation of her electrifying masterpiece Judith Slaying Holofernes, Artemisia transformed trauma into artistic rebellion. Her canvases didn’t just depict women — they armed them with strength, agency, and fire. Join us as we explore how Artemisia fought back ...

When Leonardo da Vinci painted The Mona Lisa in the early 1500s, he couldn’t have guessed her fame would come not from her smile — but her disappearance. In this premiere episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, host James William Moore uncovers the wild true story behind the 1911 theft that turned a quiet Renaissance portrait into the most famous painting in the world. Meet Vincenzo Peruggia — the handyman-turned-art-thief who stole a masterpiece, baffled Paris, and accidental...

You think art history is boring? Think again. This isn’t your dusty museum lecture. This is Art Happens — where masterpieces meet messes, and the Divine gets delightfully chaotic. Each week, we dive into the wild, weird, and wonderful stories behind the world’s most iconic art. The heists, the heartbreaks, the happy accidents — the moments that made art… happen. From Da Vinci to Duchamp, from scandal to sensation — we’re serving up bite-sized art history with a splash of wit, a dash of drama,...