Modernism
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A Guide to Pre-Raphaelite Painting
Learn about Pre-Raphaelite painting – major artists, their ideas, and how you can identify the works? Find out how it relates to the industrial revolution.
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A Guide to Fauvism
Understand the painting style Fauvism. Learn about its key artists and works, underlying ideas, historical background, and how to recognize it.
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A Guide to Cubism
How to recognize and understand Cubism. Learn about the key artists, underlying ideas, and background.
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A Guide to Post-Impressionist Painting
The Post-Impressionist movement started in Paris around 1880. Post-Impressionism can be seen in painting and other two-dimensional art forms like drawings and prints. Artists such as Cezanne, van Gogh, Matisse, and Gauguin were its stars.
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A Guide to Impressionist Painting
Impressionism is one of the most famous and well-loved styles in western art history. It’s well known for haystacks and waterlilies by Monet, dancers by Degas, and beautiful women by Renoir. Learn about Impressionism’s main ideas and controversial origins.
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Ask the Scholarly Skater
Cover image: Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew, 1308-1311. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (CC0) I recently polled my Facebook friends about their burning art-related questions. I got four great questions, for which I hope I gave four good answers. Do you have an art question you want answered?…
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The Cathedrals of Broadway by Florine Stettheimer
The Cathedrals of Broadway, from a series of four paintings by American artist Florine Stettmheimer about life in 1920s-40s New York.
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Gargoyles and Grotesques of the Pohjola Building, Helsinki
The 1901 Pohjola building in Helsinki, Finland is decorated with many grotesques representing figures from Finland’s mythology. The word “Pohjola” itself refers to a place in the myth Kalevala,which is Finland’s national epic, and the people and animals on the building are presumably from that epic. Pohjola may also refer to the name of the insurance company…
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Gargoyles and Grotesques of Casa della Vittoria, Turin
This dragon grotesque and his twin live on the Casa della Vittoria in Turin, Italy. The building is also sometimes called Casa dei Draghi, presumably because of decorations like this one. (“Drago” is the Italian work for “dragon”.) I’m having trouble finding out more about the building, on account of the fact that my Italian is currently a bit rusty,…
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Winter by Alphonse Mucha (December 16th)
A personification of winter by Alphonse Mucha. Mucha’s elegant female figures are synonymous with Art Nouveau even today.
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Fry versus Sargent
Many people are huge fans of John Singer Sargent, but British painter and art theorist Roger Fry wasn’t one of them.
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Glamour, Modernism, and the City that Never Sleeps: Art Deco in 1920s New York
“New York is an Art Deco city – indeed, the Deco city […] The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and Rockefeller Center were crowning achievements of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and remain the dominant celebrities of the midtown skyline. Deco lobbies, theatres, jazz bars, restaurants, and details also hide and surprise at eye…
