Folk art reflects the stories of survival and heritage among often underrepresented peoples. Its distinction as being a separate entity from fine art was originally due to the class structure of European society since it was classified as “an expression of the common people” in 1932 by Holger Cahill, then-director of the MoMA.
Interviews & Essays
From honorary sculptures that celebrate athletic valor, to Realist portraits that humanize individual team members, to Abstract prints that raise uncomfortable questions about violence and pain, the following seven artists prove that this American cultural phenomenon is ripe for increasingly-diverse artistic engagement.
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) was born in Rome and died in Naples, by which time she was arguably considered one of the most significant Italian Baroque painters. At the age of seventeen, Gentileschi was sexually assaulted which some scholars suggest explains the dramatic nature and subject matter of her art.
Those original 176 emojis covered themes like weather, modes of transportation, sports, technology, and of course, emotions. But if you’re thinking emojis get their name from the “emo” in emotion, you would be wrong—According to MoMA, “e” meant picture, while “moji” meant character.
Glass artist Jonathan Michael Davis was forced to navigate the changing context of a 2019 airport commission—for which he designed coronal sculptures—when COVID arrived. “What began as an initial attempt to find humor in playing with deceptive aesthetics and ambiguous shapes quickly turned into a dark irony.”
April Bey’s practice is grounded in the fundamental truth that systems and attitudes don’t need to be the way they are. Through both her striking aesthetic and her conceptual approach, Bey breaks down the false limitations set by the visual arts and society; she expands, melts, and redefines categories and mediums.
Pablo Picasso, arguably the most recognized name in 20th-century art, is also one of the most frenetically prolific, and well-documented.
As the British-Australian photographer Tim Page confirmed during an interview in 2019: “Vietnam was the first and last war with no censorship.”For some photographers, the search for gory and violent images became almost a challenge. For others, Philip Jones Griffiths above all, recording the Vietnamese horrors widened the purpose of their craft in order to reveal the futility of war and its everlasting consequences.
In Kehinde Wiley's first renowned works, he replaced white royalty, nobility, and saints with young Black men. "Rumors of War" is, among other things, a continuation of his determination to address the representation, or lack thereof, of Blackness throughout art history.
The end of WWI left the world in a tense political situation that soon generated new ambitions and rivalries. In Europe, the feelings of humiliation, together with political and economic instability, propelled some countries, such as Italy and Germany, to political extremism.
