Welcome to ArtHoles everybody. My name is Michael Anthony and this is the podcast about art and art history with someone who has absolutely no background in either topic.

I don't want to take up too much of everybody's time in just the intro, and I've got a few clips lined up from future episodes after my general spiel.

Prior to the show I knew absolutely jack shit about art or art history. I could name the obvious paintings that even children can identify like the Mona Lisa, but beyond that, I've been a handful of museums in my entire life and probably had a conscious and subconscious aversion to understanding art and art history.

It was a major intellectual blind spot.

If it came up socially and at parties, I would stand there and nod and pray that nobody asked me my opinion.

So now I'm going one artist at a time in reading thousands of pages to the detriment of my social life,

if I'm really being honest, and I'm learning about art at an absolutely

insane and inadvisable pace. And since a lot of these artists are, let's call it

emotionally, psychologically, and intellectually interesting and interact with history in sometimes next level bizarre ways.

Hopefully everybody has some fun in addition to learning a bunch.

And honestly, not to give away too much here, but if an artist has a boring story, I'm probably not going to cover them.

For the first trial run series on Picasso's origin story, I'm joined by my buddy Mitch, and then I take over solo solo and you get my full weirdness incorporating music, sound effects, movie and YouTube clips and whatever my AEDD runs across during the research,

writing, and production process.

So that's about it. I'll shout up for now and give you an idea of exactly what you're getting yourself into.

I would say this is before anything, primarily a biography podcast, and through the artist we'll learn about the art.

And the first few clips are from the later episodes in the Jackson Pollack series and his life,

that story goes places that I am still blown away by.

And then the last clip is from the Caravaggio series and his life is also quite a roller coaster ride

and it's filled with a colorful cast from history, including Mario Manitti, a bunch of weird Cardinal nephews,

some pimp's, and a Counter-Reformation tennis match that goes poorly.

So here you go, take a quick lesson and see if this is something that might be for you.

In a few days later there was a dinner party, arguably my favorite dinner party story of all time.

...