Greater attention is often paid to the causes of wars than to their aftermath. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 is immortalized in paintings, but the resettlement of defeated American Loyalists after 1783 is not.
Art News
Although such collections were kept by a wide range of groups and individuals—from Tsars to churches and apothecaries to scientific academies—a new wave of scholars have taken particular interest in the motives and cultural implications of the wealthy, often aristocratic, hobbyist collector.
Lately there have been investigations that highlight new theories on some of history’s greatest artists and their paintings. We wanted to dive into these theories to discuss their arguments, histories, and if there is any validity to them. Regardless, these new theories have proven that even if a work is three, or four, or five hundred years old, it can still cease to amaze and perplex us.
In the hotly contested battleground of Gender Studies, art historian Jonathan D. Katz is a trailblazer. He was the first tenured faculty in Gay and Lesbian Studies in the United States and has curated more queer-related art exhibitions than anyone else worldwide.
In the third installment in our series on jewelry’s place in art history, we’re exploring how the once-Emperor Napoleon used jewelry, and in particular, cameos, to try and secure his place in history.
Last week, TEFAF, The European Fine Arts Fair, opened its 36th edition in the quaint Dutch town of Maastrict. Just like any art fair, it was filled with celebrity shoppers, representatives of the top museums and galleries, and filled with thousands of artworks.
From anti-semites to abusers, this list is full of truly disheartening facts about artists who made some of the most beautiful work. There has long been an association between caustic temperaments and creative genius. But is this just an excuse developed by said jerks to get away with, quite literally in some instances, murder?
You may know the Dia Foundation from their renowned upstate escape, Dia Beacon. And while this arts center is a gem of contemporary art and sculpture, the Foundation’s work goes far beyond this singular location.
British sculptor Phyllida Barlow challenged the conventions of sculpture for over fifty years. On Monday, Barlow’s gallery Hauser & Wirth, confirmed her recent passing. She was 78.
Caspar David Friedrich, like other Romantic painters, established landscape paintings as a dominant genre in Western art. Friedrich’s coming of age was during a time when materialistic society began to favor spirituality. The artist followed this shift in ideals through expressing the natural world as a divine creation, a separate entity from human civilization. As French sculptor David d’Angers said, he was a man who had discovered “the tragedy of landscape.”
