Why Make Art?

Listen nowDownload file
Embed player
Original Air Date: 
April 17, 2016

We grow up scribbling with crayons and covering sidewalks with chalk, and then around middle school most of us stop. Maybe we think it's childish or just too hard. So what can we learn from the people who never stopped making art? We'll talk with activist artist Molly Crabapple and legendary painter/printmaker Frank Stella. And jazz pianist Craig Taborn reflects on a lifetime of improvisation.

“Refugees didn’t live in town. The overwhelming majority were stuck in a camp with layers of razor-wire-topped fences that evoked comparisons to Guantánamo from some of its residents. Meant for 600, its population had, during my late-October visit, swelle
Video

Molly Crabapple's art — her drawings, paintings and posters — have ignited various political causes, from the Occupy Movement to protests against the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo. She tells Anne how art can be a political tool.

Audio

How do you join a revolution? Egyptian artist Bahia Shehab says she was too quiet to shout in the streets during the uprising in Cairo, so she started spraying graffiti with the word "no" in Arabic.

Frank Stella, Double Gray Scramble, 1973. Screenprint on white Arches 88 mould-made paper, 29 x 50 3/4 inches. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Gemini G.E.L. and the Artist, 1981.5.98 © 2016 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New Yor
Audio

Frank Stella sits down with Steve Paulson to talk about a lesser known aspect of his remarkable career — his work as a printmaker.

Craig Taborn
Audio

In the pantheon of contemporary jazz pianists — from Keith Jarrett to Herbie Hancock — Craig Taborn is not widely known.  But among fellow jazz musicians, he’s revered. Vijay Iyer calls him “one of the greatest living pianists.

Street art that reads "Love is Color"
Audio

Maybe you're familiar with art therapy — making art to cope with pain. Philosopher Alain de Botton has a different idea. He thinks just looking at great art can be therapeutic.

Bookmarks

Choreogapher Bill T. Jones recommends Lawrence Weschler's biography of Robert Irwin, an artist who spent his career attempting to capture the subjectivity of the act of experiencing the world around us.

paint on canvas
Audio

Philosopher Alva Noe has a theory about art. He says art is like philosophy, and the best art is disorienting and uncomfortable.

Show Details 📻
Airdates
April 17, 2016
March 03, 2018
February 05, 2017
Categories: 
Last modified: 
July 03, 2019