Pretty Much Pop #51: Pictures Telling Stories w/ Joseph Watson

Is it really true that “every picture tells a story”? Storytelling is part of Joseph’s method, whether he’s creating city scenes or public sculpture or children’s illustrations. So how does the story an author may have in mind affect the viewer, and is this different for different types of art?

Joseph, who works in Las Vegas, does online streaming of drawing sessions through Instagram and Facebook, and is perhaps best known as the illustrator of the Go, Go, GRETA! book series, joins Mark, Erica, and Brian to explore the picture-narrative connection and more generally how knowing about the creation of an image affects our reception of it, touching on GuernicaWhere the Wild Things AreDr. SeussThe Chronicles of Narnia, and more.

You can browse Joseph’s work at josephwatsonart.com, and you’re really going to want in particular to look at a couple of the works that we consider explicitly:

Other sources we looked at in preparation for this discussion include:

Follow Joseph on Instagram @josephwatsonart, also Twitter and Facebook.

This episode includes bonus discussion that you can hear now by supporting the podcast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This week, it includes a particularly philosophical consideration of the notion of escapism and how different that is from so-called serious pursuits. Is this just a version of the high-low culture distinction that we largely rejected in episode one?

This podcast is part of the Partially Examined Life podcast network and is curated by openculture.com.

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