PNTGS the Podcast

In 2012 Larry Gagosian teamed with Damien Hirst to launch a sprawling show of 300 spot paintings. The show would be spread across all 11 Gagosian Gallery locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong, opening worldwide on January 12, 2012. Most of the paintings were lent by private individuals and public institutions, with more than 150 different lenders from twenty countries. A contest was conceived with prizes awarded to globetrotters who visited every location and completed a punch card. Damien Hirst was dropped by Gagosian less than a year after the exhibition was staged.

A painting whose intensity is only matched by its creator, the Raft of the Medusa depicts one of the most shocking tragedies of the 19th century. Hoping that provocation would help jumpstart his career, and fueled by his own morbid fascination with the event, painter Théodore Géricault began a year-long descent into creative mania and anguish before debuting the piece at the 1819 Paris Salon. This week we discuss the painting that maintains a deep foothold in art history, and still manages to captivate and influence a variety of painters and artists working in different media almost two centuries after its execution.

Kerstin Brätsch is a contemporary painter who, after arriving professionally in the New Museum triennial “Younger Than Jesus”, has diversified her practice with a number of collaborators. As a founder of Das Institut and a contributor to the ongoing project “Kaya”, Brätsch pushes continuously to find new modes for her vocabulary of painting. This week we delve into her career and various bodies of work.

Episode 6: Bob Thompson was a man in a hurry. This week we discuss the lightning fast rise through the art world of this under-appreciated black painter from the 1960s, as well as his work which occupied a space between abstract expressionism and history painting.

After being passed over for acceptance into the Exposition Universelle, Courbet erected his own pavilion to show "The Painter's Studio: A real allegory summing up seven years of my artistic and moral life". In this episode we analyze the famous work, and we discuss its relationship to the philosophy of Proudhon.

Hilma Af Klimt was a well-regarded painter until the turn of the century when her artistic output apparently ceased. It wasn't until 1986 - 42 years after her death - that the body of work she had built in secrecy was unveiled to the public. In this episode we explore the life and work of the first western abstractionist and her deep relationship to the occult; which eventually led to her lifetime of self imposed obscurity.