Articles

Ugo Mulas, Robert Rauschenberg in front of his silkscreen painting Express, 1963, at the XXII International Biennale of Art Exhibition, Venice, 1964. © Ugo Mulas Heirs. All rights reserved. Via the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

Samuel Reed

A Guide to Robert Rauschenberg's Most Controver...

Robert Rauschenberg's combines, erasures, and prize wins repeatedly forced critics, museums, and the federal government to decide what counted as art.

The Limbourg Brothers, The Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, 1405-1408/1409; Bifolium: 73-74r - Great Litany Process - End of the Plague; via The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Arthur Kingsley

Case Study: The Belles Heures of Jean, Duc de B...

A case study on the Belles Heures, the Limbourg brothers' only complete manuscript, and how it set the course for Early Netherlandish painting.

Paul Cézanne, The Card Players, 1890-92 via The MET/Public Domain

Margaret Allen

Card Players: Deceit, Chance, and Gambling in A...

From the Northern Renaissance to Cubism, see how deceit, chance, and gambling made card players a recurring motif across six major art movements.

Lou Boileau, Wendy Beckett ('Sister Wendy'), January 2006 © Lou Boileau via National Portrait Gallery

Rebecca Levenson

Sister Wendy Beckett, the Art World's Favorite Nun

The cloistered nun who taught herself art from postcards then became television's most beloved art critic and gave away every dollar she earned.

Carlo Crivelli, Saint Mary Magdalene (detail), c. 1480, via The National Gallery

Eliza Warren

How Gold Ground Painting Gave Way to Painted Light

From Lorenzo Monaco's gilded Adoration to Piero della Francesca's night sky, these 15th-century paintings trace how sacred light replaced gold leaf.

Arshile Gorky, How My Mother's Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life, 1944, © Arshile Gorky Foundation, via the Arshile Gorky Foundation [AGCR: P296]

Nathan Cole

Arshile Gorky and the Art of Studying Everyone ...

Before his signature abstraction, Arshile Gorky moved through Cézanne, Picasso, Munch, Léger, and Kandinsky, building the language that made him.

Tania Marmolejo, I Always Come Back Here, 2019, oil on canvas via Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery

Rebecca Levenson

Contemporary Women Artists We Can't Stop Thinki...

These contemporary women painters are building distinctive careers through surreal imagery, technical mastery, and growing representation worldwide.

Gustav Klimt, Old Man on his Death-Bed, c. 1899 via Arthive

Jack Lowry

The Most Haunting Deathbed Portraits in Art His...

A ranking of the most haunting deathbed portraits in art history, spanning royal commissions, anonymous painters, and one strikingly unconventional final entry.

Donald Judd inspecting prototypes or finished works (as above, at Bernstein Brothers in the 1960s © 2020 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Elizabeth Baker, courtesy Judd Foundation Archive via The Guggenheim

Rebecca Levenson

Inside 4 Artist House Museums That Reveal Their...

Step inside four artist house museums, from Monet's Giverny to Dalí's Port Lligat, where painters and sculptors built their art into their homes.

Grant Wood, Stone City, 1930 © Figge Art Museum, successors to the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY via artnet

Louisa Penrose

8 Lesser-Known Grant Wood Paintings Beyond Amer...

Grant Wood painted one of the most haunting images in American art. Explore 8 lesser-known Grant Wood paintings that reveal the rest of his story.