Episode 5: Barnett Newman

This is episode 4 of MoMA’s new podcast “The Secret Lives of Artists,” which tells the stories you don’t know about the artists you think you do. Each concise episode explores the secret talents and obsessive pursuits of some of our favorite modern artists.

Model, muse, artist, photojournalist, inventor, mother, chef. Lee Miller had many lives in the 20th century. We are only just now grasping her impact as a photographer in Surrealist Paris in the 1930s and as a photojournalist documenting the toll of war. Miller’s son, Antony Penrose, narrates the discovery of thousands of negatives in the attic, which led to a new understanding of the scope of her work, along with MoMA assistant curator Caitlin Ryan and host Naeem Douglas.

John Cage is best known as a revolutionary composer who expanded the definition of music to include sound, silence, and chance. But while he was working on his art, Cage couldn’t stop thinking about mushrooms. MoMA assistant curator Alison Burstein, Cage scholars and fellow foragers Howard Risati and Ray Kass, and host Naeem Douglas discuss Cage’s groundbreaking compositions and his obsession with enigmatic fungi, which even led to his appearance on a game show.

Marcel Duchamp rewrote the rules of modern art, but also happened to be obsessed with one of the most rule-bound games ever invented: chess. MoMA Chief Curator Ann Temkin, Duchamp scholar Francis Naumann, and host Naeem Douglas retrace Duchamp’s journey from a provocative young artist to a devoted chess player and ask whether the strategy he brought to the board also appears in the choices that defined his career.