Production of applause and ideastream Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Coming up, two French masters make an impression with their paintings and portraits.

A dancer carries on an ancient tradition in northeast Ohio, and a musical Buckeye shares groovy beats and provocative vocals.

Hello and welcome to applause Im ideastream stream public media's Kabir Bhatia for an artist, the creative spark can come from anywhere, sometimes from a good friend.

A new exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art takes us to 18th century France, where two painters who are also friends inspired one another.

And it shows.

Step inside the gallery.

Now for a look at Manet and Morisot Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot What I think many would agree is the closest relationship of any two artists within the Impressionist circle.

I think in kind of old fashioned art history and thinking and past generations, perhaps many have been tempted simply to look at Manet's absolutely stunning ten or so portraits of Morisot and to think of her as a muse.

First and as an artist second.

But this exhibition takes, I think, a very fresh and different approach.

A professional woman artist in the 1870s and 1880s was extremely rare.

The concept that a woman artist of the 1870s could inspire and even, have an effect upon Manet.

The father of modern painting, I think, is a bold interpretation.

We introduced pairs of paintings by the two artists with this pair small, kind of intimate sized paintings of the exact same subject.

But their approaches are really different.

And I think these two paintings show that their training is extremely different.

So if you look at Manet's painting, which was painted first, this would have been painted in his studio from sketches over a period of time.

She's a plein air painter, a landscape ist whose primary, interest is atmosphere and movement.

He is primarily a studio painter who can paint these kind of anecdotal groups of figures.

So I think we can credit him with the beginning of the interest in the figure for her.

She marries his younger brother.

They become family members.

They see each other's work frequently in studios and exhibitions, and he starts borrowing subject matter like the Parisian, the stylish Parisian woman, for instance.

And most particularly, he starts borrowing her looser, feathery brushwork.

Manet is a great one to revise and work on his pictures.

He was working on this painting for about two years.

It was in his studio and she was added throughout rather far along in the process, over painted over part of the boat.

This looser brushwork, particularly over her legs and the dress, is really channeling Morisot the whole subject, in fact, of two people, at leisure or perhaps on a weekend going boating, that's a quintessentially impressionist subject.

So he is wanting to show his audiences and people that he is very up to date, both in his subject matter and in his own style and what he is capable of.

The New York Times called this pairing the most symbiotic pairing in the exhibition of works by Manet and Morisot And I think what the reviewer meant in the times is that he is trying to out Morisot Morisot here with his freedom of handling of the brushwork, that broad, kind of spontaneous looking way that he's handling the paint, both in the corset, in the dress, in that wallpaper, and in that curtain that we see probably hanging from the bed.

This is all channeling, even that kind of zigzag of painting the way that Morisot had kind of created a signature way of handling paint.

It's one thing when you do the thing that comes naturally to you, it shows, and it's another thing when you try to do something and you can do it, you can master it, but it takes some effort.

And I think that may be what you're seeing here that he is trying on her hat and he can wear it and do it, but she has this effortless, seemingly effortless way of working where the forms seem to just kind of coalesce on the canvas in this very, very subtle but yet magical way.

I think he continues to be a presence in her life even after he dies in 1883, a tragically young.

I think the lessons he taught her informally through dialog and what she learned by watching him, and even in his responses to her work and what he did, continue to feed her intellectually and artistically.

I see a very self-assured, confident woman meeting our gaze, looking directly at us.

She knows who she is.

She knows what she's accomplished, still has things she'd like to do.

She knows that she has been a muse and a model, but she's been a lot more than that as well.

She's been a great artist.

She's holding her palette and her paintbrush and the little flowers on her smock, I think, read like military medals.

So she has fought in the wars, as it were, in the art world, and she has been won herself recognition on her own standing.

Artists tend not to think in boxes and in silos and in restricted ways.

But I think in, in very open ways.

And I think these are artists who did that and who impacted each other's lives and work in some profound and wonderful ways.

The exhibit “Manet and Morisot” is on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art through July 5th.

I wonder if Manet ever sent Morisot a postcard.

What would be the postage on something like that?

That would be quite a find for any collector, particularly the folks at the Western Reserve Postcard Society.

Every spring, these postcard connoisseurs get together to show off their historic collectibles.

I probably have one of the most extensive Cleveland postcard collections.

I wouldn't say it's the most, but I'd say I'm up there.

Everybody always enjoys looking at postcards and finding that one that they've been searching for years.

Or someone will say, you made my day.

I'm so thrilled that I found this postcard.

My name is Harlan Ullman.

I am the newly elected president of the Western Reserve Postcard Society.

I've been a collector a long time, and it took me a while before I joined the club.

I'd probably been a member about 20 or 30 years, probably closer to 30.

I'm Shirley Goldberg, and I Welcome to Western Reserve Postcard Society.

Many people that enjoy collecting postcards of every subject matter, even part of their life, their history, different hobbies that they have.

When I was kind of towards the end of my first decade, about eight, somewhere in 8 to 10 years old, I became, I developed two of the great interests in my life.

The Cleveland Indians now Guardians and then, Cleveland history.

And that latter one evolved into postcards.

And then I, you know, I found there were a lot of them about Cleveland with all the various buildings, many of which still exist and many of which were gone.

And that led to an almost lifelong love of postcards.

So when I started looking for postcards for my children, then I noticed my stack was getting a larger than what I was picking up for them.

Collecting postcards is very educational.

I started my children trying to learn what is grown in America, what the manufacturers were, what the climate was, where the oceans and the rivers are.

And to know a bit about geography.

My postcard as we know it was created by an act of Congress.

I think it was 1898, but before postcards, they were called private mailing cards or PMCs.

And, they were developed as a quick, easy way to communicate with people.

And was a little the postage rate was cheaper and you would have a photo of where you were or something.

And the intent was to people to mail these things.

Quick little note the so-called wish you were here thing.

But I think what unexpectedly happened was, you know, people didn't have cameras then and they would use postcards to have pictures of what they were seeing, you know, because they didn't they couldn't capture those images any other way.

Then there were also postcards of circus or different entertainment or movie theaters that are no longer around.

And there's all postcards.

And those memories, you were there, you you didn't have a camera at the time, but you certainly could buy a postcard and save it for those years.

That led to what was called the golden age of postcards, which, you know, millions of cards were created and bought and many of which are brand new.

I mean, you find cards all the time from over 100 years old that were never sent.

And the reason was people bought them because that was their photo album of their trip.

One might find a folder that consists of 12 or 16 or 18.

This one's more like a book.

And this is on Rome.

Then the brownie camera was invented by Kodak and that put cameras in most people's hands.

And that kind of led to the decline of postcards, in terms of modern usage.

But, but the reason the hobby is still strong in some cases is that people like the history part, you know, the images, the old images, the artwork that's on them.

You can buy a postcard and a postcard show for a few dollars, and you have a nice piece of artwork.

Anybody can afford.

For me as an artist, the postcards are a very good reference for me to create a painting.

My name is Jim Sens all I've been an artist seems like almost all my life, when I would be on the road traveling, I would make postcards to send to my grandkids, and I'd be looking out the window and maybe I might see whatever landmark in town that I was happened in Beaune.

And I'd say, man, I gotta, I gotta send this to one of my grandkids.

So that's really how I started doing postcard art.

And I've been doing postcard art for quite a long time.

The postcards, the finished product starts out in here as a sketch, and then I refine it as as time goes on.

I've been to New Orleans three times.

Okay, so I've done some paintings of New Orleans.

I've been out West a lot.

It took my wife and I 30 years to visit all 21 of the Spanish missions.

I sketched and painted each and every one of them.

Everybody has a different specialty that they wanted to collect.

I never declared it, but I think now that I think about it, I have a starting a collection of carousels, things like that that I can use as a reference, but create an original piece of art myself.

This is one of the holy grail cards of Cleveland.

It's certainly the holy grail card of amusement parks.

A Paradise was the lesser known of the parks, and I go to postcard shows and I always hear people saying, do you have Puritas park, this photo here of the the original or first carousel at Puritas Springs Park.

And, this is that very same photo made into a postcard, and it's hard to find postcards now, I used to be in a pharmacy or drugstore or, a five and ten.

Well, where are the five and ten?

So they're not around anywhere.

Where are those postcards?

They're in somebody's shoe box by now.

Probably your shoe box or an album or an album.

And I think nostalgia is something that people will always be interested in.

People want to.

They want to see where things were.

They want to see what it was like for their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents.

It'd be a shame to see the hobby, become extinct.

And I, I don't think it will in my lifetime.

But yeah, a lot of things people think are going to be there forever and not there.

And but these postcards will be here for, for a long time, you know, even where we were gone.

The Western Reserve Postcard Societys annual show is April 24th and 25th at Rocky River Memorial Hall.

While postcards go back more than a century, this next art form goes back more than 2000 years.

It's the classical Indian dance style known as Bharatanatyam.

Here in northeast Ohio, we're lucky enough to have one of the contemporary masters, Cleveland Arts Prize winner Sujatha Srinivasan Here she shares this ancient dance with her own flair for the dramatic.

I think I started at the age of five and a half or six.

My mom introduced me to dance lessons.

I vaguely remember that, but I know that I was very excited to go to dance classes.

It was a very huge passion of mine to learn dancing.

My hometown is Chennai.

It's a beautiful city.

Chennai is the den of Bharatanatyam It's one of the seven classical dance forms of India.

They say that it's as old as 2000 B.C., and they attributed to Lord Shiva, who was the first dancer.

It was passed on from a teacher guru to a student verbally.

Even to this day, it's a living tradition.

And it started as worship in the temples and then slowly went to the proscenium on the stage.

And it's one of the most popular dance forms in the world.

Bhavam means expression.

Ragam means melody, Thalam means rhythm, and Natyam means theater or drama.

So Bharatanatyam, it incorporates everything that it can bring along underneath that umbrella.

In that way, I think it is one of the best dance forms.

And no wonder it is so popular.

She's the consummate artist.

She's an amazing performer.

I think, though, to be honest, her talent lies in bringing that out in other dancers.

I moved into this country in 1993 and came to Cleveland in 1995.

This should be a posture, should be up, and you should be extending your body.

Originally, I didn't want to start teaching, but then I understood that there was not a lot of performing opportunities here.

And then the community around me kept asking me to start lessons for the little kids.

And I get a lot of happiness when I. I introduce a dance step to somebody and me.

We usually like to start when they are six years old, and pretty much for the next 12 years that are with me.

If they want to pursue dance, by the time they are 15 or 16, they become really good.

So learning from my mother and my guru as well, since a young age, has not only fully influenced me as a dancer, but also me as a scientist, as an individual, as an innovator.

Learning from your mother, especially somebody that's very established and, well known, comes with these extra expectations that other students don't necessarily have.

As time evolved, of course.

She started to give me more space and room to grow, and our relationship has grown stronger and stronger, of course, both artistically and on the mother daughter axis.

The way I dress, the way I wear all this, it's not just, just for dance.

It's a way of life that I carry on, even in my everyday pursuit of life that comes and integrates itself into the art form.

So when I create that person as a dancer, I'm also creating somebody who has got a little bit of India in them.

And this is the traditional art form.

Can she draw her eyes a little bit more?

Classical art forms are very difficult to pass on, so I believe it's the responsibility of every teacher and artist to make sure that the next generation continues in the manner that we wanted it to be.

some of the art form.

There is no compromise on that.

And over the years, as you mature as you, as a dancer, as a teacher and as a choreographer, that comes a deeper appreciation of the fundamentals to appreciate the core values of this classical dance form even more.

She gives them all of the purest form of the dance, and at the same time she has repeatedly proved you don't have to lighten, the classicism to appeal to the people.

It's not only connects the Indian diaspora and their children to their roots, but it also gives the, for the wider population a greater understanding and appreciation of an art form, which may be totally different for them.

I have unbounded admiration for her.

She's a remarkable artist, remarkable human being.

And then she sees the ring.

That's something familiar.

So she takes it, and then she's so happy that she's got it.

She's clenches.

That she's so happy.

Dances about communication.

For me personally, there's a joy that I feel when I'm performing.

And I want that joy to be shared.

If I'm performing at a school to children, then I try to tell stories and make them very simple and enjoyable so that it ignites their interest to see the dance or to be more inquisitive about the dance.

But I'm performing at our own Indian dance festivals that I am presenting.

What that is traditional that will portray the bandwidth and the greatness of the artform.

When I am performing at Cleveland Public Theater or the Cleveland Museum of Art, where I am commissioned to do work, I have been presenting work that makes people think, that makes people not only take home something from the dance, but also connect to a very socially relevant subject that is happening beneath.

I've been fortunate to be in a place where artists not only given recognition but appreciated.

And it hasn't been a very welcoming audience.

And everybody's welcome and everybody can share, give and take that is beautiful.

And to be part of an art ecosystem that is very vibrant and that is always growing.

And then for me to have shared my art and know that it is welcomed.

It's a very big joy for me.

And the Ohio Heritage Fellowship Award helped me to be introduced to new people who do not know about partnership or do not know about me.

And that paved a way to introduce my art I couldn't be more proud that my guru, Sujatha Srinivasan has been named as the Ohio Heritage Fellow, and it speaks not only to her personal excellence as a performer, but I think more to the fact that she's had such a broad impact on the community around her to show how art can transcend language, religion, cultures.

And in that way, I think she's really helped the classical art of Bharatanatyam spread through the community.

And I think building that kind of impact really takes a lot of work.

And foresight.

Here's a peek at what's in store next time on applause.

We're going to give it up for local comics working the standup circuit.

so committed to being in comedy all these years because I have no other way of making money.

I've been doing this for so long.

I didn't go to college.

I was a bad high school student.

Join us for more Stand Up in the land, made in collaboration with the Cleveland State University School of Film.

Plus, An Old Joke becomes a new tune by Country Home.

All that and more on the next round of applause.

Thanks for joining us for this round of applause, my friends.

I'm Ideastreams Kabir Bhatia saying goodbye, but not before I introduce you to Cherimondis J. from Columbus.

Born in Dayton, she's a recent graduate of the Ohio State University School of Music.

you can hear what's sometimes called the Ohio bounce in this introspective tune.

Vines.

Production of applause and ideastream Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.