The Artist Critics Love to Hate

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

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4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2021

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

LeRoy Neiman was a colorful man, both figuratively and literally. His handlebar mustache, long cigar, and sketchpad were fixtures at the sidelines of American pop culture: from boxing matches to jazz clubs and political conventions. His paintings, sketches, and prints papered the second half of the 20th century, highlighting American icons in his colorful expressionist style. He was rich, famous, and adored by many Americans… but not the art critics.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX, I'm Lizzie Peabody.
0:24.0	This painting is enormous.
0:26.7	This is even bigger than I imagined it was.
0:29.3	Can you go stand next to it for me?
0:31.3	For real?
0:32.3	Yeah.
0:33.3	I'm just inside the entrance to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, with Curator
0:37.8	Eric Gench.
0:38.8	Eric's going, Eric is six, too.
0:41.6	It is like twice as tall as you are.
0:44.1	The museum isn't open yet, so this space which ordinarily would be echoing with visitor's
0:48.5	voices is quiet.
0:50.9	But towering over Eric is a painting that's loud.
0:55.0	It's like this big collage of, like, color and sound.
1:01.2	Which is, you know, I think what you feel like a good way of describing jazz, right?
1:10.3	The painting is called Big Band.
1:12.4	It shows 18 American jazz legends playing together in a cacophony of color.
1:18.6	We kind of have this vibrancy around Billy Holiday, this orange and yellow.
1:32.7	And then Elevus Gerald, who kind of goes into these pinks and florals through Charlie
1:37.0	Parker and Miles Davis, you have these darker blues, you know.
1:46.6	And then up near Jean Coupa, it's like more energetic, this purple.
1:54.1	It shows like you have these swaths of color, but I think even though it's a visual medium,
	...

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